


Welcome to Hell (Lake)

by aosav



Series: Welcome to the Mermaid AU [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Explicit Language, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Minor Akaashi Keiji/Kozume Kenma, Oikawa being paranoid, aliens (but not really), demons (but not really), everyone being snarky, mermaid!Kageyama, suga consuming an alarming amount of coffee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-18 03:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9366035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosav/pseuds/aosav
Summary: Oikawa, Suga, Kenma, and Akaashi rent a cabin on a lake. There is a monster in that lake. Or something like that.





	1. Day One: Welcome to Hell (Lake)

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason, they are in America. I don’t know why that is, story-wise, but they are.

“Welcome to Hell,” Oikawa reads as they pass the sign at the edge of town. “You know, that seemed a lot funnier when it wasn’t pitch black and pouring down rain in the middle of the scariest forest I’ve ever seen. It seemed a lot funnier at home.”

“It said, ‘Welcome to Hell Lake,’” Suga corrects him. “It’s just a name.”

“Yeah, but they didn’t call it ‘Pleasant Lake,’ did they?” Oikawa says. He really did think the name was funny – hysterical, even – when they booked the cabin two weeks ago, slightly drunk on both the end of their last final exams ever and also on beer. And he still thinks the name is funny. Or, he will, once they actually find the cabin and the thunder starts sounding a little more distant and a little less like one of these massive trees looming over them on both sides of this narrow dirt road has finally given up the ghost and is coming down, hard, right on top of them. Oikawa doesn’t want to die by tree. That would be horrifically embarrassing.

“I think the turn is coming up,” Akaashi says, leaning forward in the shotgun seat to peer out the windshield, as if getting closer to the glass will allow him to see through the torrential rain.

“How can you tell, Kei-chan?” Oikawa asks. “It all looks the same.”

“We passed a bait and tackle shop a few minutes ago,” Akaashi says, “and the turn is supposed to be the first right after that … I think.”

“You don’t know?” Oikawa demands, feeling less and less pleased with Suga’s “executive decision” to make Akaashi the navigator. “You’re the navigator!”

“We aren’t lost,” Akaashi says, somewhat defensively.

“So you know where we are?” Oikawa asks.

“Approximately,” Akaashi says.

“Approxi–!”

“Wait, turn here, turn here!” Akaashi suddenly shouts.

Suga throws the wheel hard to the right, the car sliding on the wet road as he tries to make the turn that Oikawa can just barely see as a break in the trees.

If they hydroplane and die, Oikawa is going to come back and haunt all of their families. Mostly Akaashi’s.

Oikawa reaches out and grabs onto Kenma, clutching his hand. Kenma immediately tugs his hand back without even looking up from his Gameboy. Oikawa frowns at him. He’s been glued to the thing since they got in the car eight hours ago. It’s a wonder he isn’t carsick – especially with Suga’s driving.

“You should be nice to me, Ken-chan,” Oikawa tells Kenma, “in case we die in a car crash. You’d hate to die with your final act a denial of comfort to one of your best friends, wouldn’t you?”

“We aren’t going to die,” Suga says. He has straightened out the car after his ridiculous turn but the look of intense concentration that Oikawa can see reflected in the windshield doesn’t exactly fill him with confidence.

Neither does this road. The trees are even closer together, looming over them, now that they’ve turned off the main dirt road and onto a smaller, shittier dirt road. And the rain is still coming down hard.

“We just have to find the sign for Hell Cabin,” Akaashi says. He has the directions they printed out from the booking website spread across his lap, squinting at them in the light from his phone. If his efforts at navigation thus far are anything to judge by, they aren’t going to do him much good.

“Again, the name was a lot funnier in our living room,” Oikawa says. “I thought the woods were supposed to be _nice_ and _peaceful_.”

“‘Tranquil’ is the word a lot of people use,” Kenma offers helpfully, still without looking up.

“This is not tranquil,” Oikawa says. He gestures out the window at the dark and stormy night. The trees look ready to kill at any moment. It’s so dark out that Oikawa can only see past his own reflection in the window every minute or so when bright lightning fills the sky in flashes.

“It will be tranquil once we get there,” Suga says. His voice is calm and cheerful in an only slightly forced kind of way but his grip on the steering wheel is white-knuckled. They’re all pretty stressed. This has not been the easiest road trip in a lot of ways, and now this storm has put them all – even peppy Suga and Zen Akaashi – on edge. Akaashi’s awful navigation skills haven’t helped. It seems they have found the one thing that beautiful, unflappable Akaashi is truly terrible at.

“I think this is the road right here,” Akaashi says, leaning forward again to read the sign that is swaying ominously in the harsh wind.

“‘Hell Cabin,’” Oikawa reads out. “That’s the place. Home sweet home for the next week.”

“Good,” Kenma says, finally glancing up from his Gameboy to look out his window as they turn down the rutted road. “My battery is almost dead; I need an outlet.”

“There’s no electricity at the cabin,” Suga reminds him.

Kenma’s expression goes flat. Oikawa had forgotten about that little detail. No electricity hadn’t seemed like a big deal when they booked it; it sounded quaint. But, again, they _were_ a bit drunk.

“There, there,” Oikawa comforts him. He drapes an arm around Kenma’s shoulders and leans their heads together. “We’ll just have to talk to each other like uncivilized folk,” he says.

“We talk all the time,” Kenma says. He shifts, resting some of his weight against Oikawa. He must have reached the end of a level, because the screen of his Gameboy is dark and the device is held loosely in his lap.

“We don’t talk in the woods, though!” Oikawa says. “Around campfires – just think of the campfires, Ken-chan! We’ll have glorious campfires.”

“Once this rain lets up,” Suga says.

“It should pass through by morning,” Akaashi says. He is still leaning forward, watching the thick woods beside the road as Suga drives very, very slowly. “Here,” he says, lifting a hand to gesture to their left. “This looks like it.”

Suga turns down the drive for their cabin, which is marked by another “Welcome to Hell Lake” sign, this one in an even worse state of disrepair than the others they’ve seen so far. As they drive past the sign, a thunderclap sounds out just as a flash of lightning illuminates the shaking trees that loom over them.

“For the record,” Oikawa says cheerfully, squeezing Kenma’s shoulder, “this is how horror movies start.”

“If Jason comes for us, I’ll send him your way,” Akaashi says drily.

“Mean, Kei-chan!” Oikawa gasps, clutching his chest with the hand not wrapped around Kenma.

“Are we there yet?” Kenma asks. His eyes are closed, Oikawa can just barely see, and more and more of his weight is pressing against Oikawa by the second. Any minute now, he’ll be asleep.

Oikawa is _not_ carrying him inside the cabin, no matter how cute he is.

“Stay awake, Ken-chan,” Oikawa says, singsong, nudging him. “We’re almost there.”

“Wake me when we get there,” Kenma mumbles.

“Wake up; we’re here,” Suga says. The relief in his voice is audible. Oikawa seconds that emotion.

“Thank goodness,” Oikawa says loudly, stretching out his arms, intentionally jostling Kenma so that he has to sit up. Kenma grumbles but pushes himself upright, grabbing at his Gameboy as it nearly slides off his lap. Oikawa leans forward, between the driver and shotgun seats, as Suga parks the car. “What a beauty,” Oikawa says, staring at the cabin. He can barely see it through the heavy sheets of rain – which is going to make unloading the car _so much fun_ – but it looks every inch the perfect set for a horror film. There’s even a half-caved-in porch on the front of it.

“If we wanted a nice place, we would have had to pay for it,” Suga says, ever reasonable. He is also staring at the cabin. His cheerful tone does not match the doubt in his face.

“And besides,” Oikawa says, “with a place like this, whatever happens is sure to be an adventure!”

“That is one word for it,” Akaashi says.

“Just think of the campfires, Kei-chan,” Oikawa tells him.

“This place does look ready for a campfire,” Akaashi says. “And by that I mean that someone should have burned it down a long time ago.”

“Don’t be rude, Kei-chan,” Oikawa says. “I’m sure it’s very nice on the inside.”

 

* * *

 

The cabin is not nice on the inside. The harsh light of Akaashi’s phone flashlight is not kind. Then again, Oikawa doesn’t think even the gentlest light could help this place. The wallpaper is peeling in large swathes, revealing bits of newspaper under it. The floorboards are, in many places, warped – probably from water damage, because the roof is leaking steadily, noticeably, as they stand in the entryway and stare.

“Well,” Suga says. He does not add anything else. It seems to sum things up.

“Well,” Oikawa echoes him.

“Lights?” Kenma asks.

“There are candles in the living room,” Suga says, pulling out the printout for the cabin and his phone. He turns on the flashlight on his phone to read the printout, leading the way further into the house, all of them dripping as they go. It’s a good thing, maybe, that there’s already so much water damage – Oikawa doesn’t have to feel guilty about tracking water everywhere.

They find the candles in the “TV cabinet,” which is an odd thing to call it because there is no TV in it. Oikawa wonders if there once was a TV in it which was removed when the cabin’s owners decided to cut costs and only rent to broke college kids who can’t afford electricity. There are, at least, plenty of candles.

“Now it looks like the part of the horror film where the stupid kids decide to perform a demonic ritual for funsies,” Oikawa says, looking around at all of the candles they have lit.

Kenma, who is huddled on the couch and has not helped set up their demonic ritual _at all_ , mumbles something into his knees. Akaashi strokes his hair from where he is sitting on the arm of the couch.

“I can’t believe what we’re paying for this place,” Akaashi says.

“We’re paying almost nothing,” Suga says. He lights the last of the candles with a flourish and then whips the match through the air to extinguish it.

“And it’s still too much,” Akaashi says.

“There isn’t even Wi-Fi,” Kenma groans, the words barely intelligible. Akaashi pets his hair again.

“We could hardly be more in the middle of nowhere,” Oikawa agrees. “Which is what makes this the perfect place –”

“No,” Akaashi says.

“– for an alien abduction!” Oikawa finishes, ignoring Akaashi. He waves one arm around in a sweeping gesture, indicating the house and the creepy woods surrounding it. “Isolated,” he says excitedly, “remote, and there’s even a nice big lake for them to land on!”

“How would they land on the lake?” Suga asks.

“They can travel hundreds of lightyears through space but they can’t land on water?” Oikawa says. He scoffs. “Get with it, Kou-chan.”

Suga hums. “Well, I’m going to light the stove,” he says. “It’s freezing in here.”

From the couch, Kenma makes a noise of agreement.

“The wood’s in the kitchen, right?” Akaashi asks, already getting up and moving in that direction.

“Yes,” Suga calls after him. He crouches down by the cast-iron wood-burning stove and tugs at the handle. It takes a few pulls before the door opens.

“I wonder if you can make some kind of crop-circle equivalent on a lake,” Oikawa says. He drops onto the couch next to Kenma, who immediately curls into him, seeking warmth. Kenma has always run cold. Oikawa wraps an arm around him and rubs his hand up and down over the thick wool of Kenma’s sweater. No one responds to his posed question, but that’s okay. They have a week to figure it out.

Akaashi comes back with an armload of wood and sets it on the floor next to Suga. Suga is squinting at the cabin printout, flipping back and forth through the pages. His hands are covered in black soot and so are the papers. Akaashi grimaces at the dirt on his hands from the wood and immediately turns around and heads back to the kitchen.

Oikawa strokes Kenma’s sweater and stares out the windows. That is one nice thing about the cabin – the entire back wall is glass, giving them an excellent view of the lake, presumably, when it isn’t dark and storming. Right now, all Oikawa can see is darkness except when the lightning gives him a quick peek at the scattered trees and sloping lawn that lead down to the lakeside.

The next flash of lightning illuminates something far more unusual, though.

Oikawa jumps off of the couch, staring, wide-eyed, out at the lake. “Did you see that?” he asks, looking from Suga to Kenma and back to the window. Kenma moans, probably because his personal heater left him, but he doesn’t look up. Suga stares at Oikawa.

“No?” Suga says. “See what?”

“In the lake!” Oikawa says. He’s shouting, he is aware of this, but this is a shouting matter. He looks back at Suga, then back at the lake, then back at Suga again. Suga is staring at him, bemused. “There’s something in the lake,” Oikawa hisses, dropping his voice. “I saw it!”

“Okay,” Suga says. He turns back to the woodstove, shoving firewood into it.

“No, I swear,” Oikawa says. He knows he can be a bit dramatic at times, and that he has an awareness of the preternatural that his friends lack – their loss – but this isn’t like the time he thought a helicopter was a UFO and dragged them all out of bed and onto the dorm roof at 3 a.m. This is _serious_.

There is _something in the lake_.

“Kou-chan,” Oikawa says, somberly, “I swear. I saw something in the lake.”

“Like a bird, or a turtle?” Suga says. “There’s supposed to be a lot of wildlife around here.”

“Like a _thing_ ,” Oikawa says. He waves a hand at the windows, in the direction of the lake. “It was a big, dark shape on the surface of the lake. It looked almost like a person, but it _wasn’t_.”

“Could it have been a log sticking up out of the water?” Suga asks. He isn’t even looking. He’s still focused on the stupid woodstove. They have bigger problems here!

Oikawa drops to his knees beside Suga and takes his face into his hands. Suga looks at him, his eyebrows drawing tight in the beginnings of annoyance. Oikawa shakes his head a bit, trying to impart the seriousness of the situation.

“Kou-chan,” Oikawa says, “there is a monster in the lake.”

Suga opens his mouth to respond, probably to continue to doubt Oikawa, the beautiful narrow-minded fool, but he is interrupted by a shout from the kitchen. Oikawa and Suga both turn to stare as Akaashi storms back into the living room. He is holding one of his hands to his chest and scowling.

“The water taps are backwards,” Akaashi says. “I turned on the cold water and it wasn’t running very well, so I waited a moment for the stream to kick up, and when it did and I stuck my hand under it the water was scalding.”

“Did you burn yourself?” Suga asks. He stands, leaving Oikawa on the floor by the woodstove, and goes to examine Akaashi’s hand.

Akaashi shakes his head, letting Suga take his hand and check it over. “I don’t think so,” he says. “Or, if I did, then it isn’t a bad burn.”

“The cabin is cursed,” Oikawa says with growing realization. He feels a thrill of fear. All of his jokes about horror movies are suddenly a lot less funny in light of this new information. “First a lake monster, and now this.”

“What?” Akaashi asks.

“The first aid kit is in the car,” Suga says. “I can go get it.”

As if to inform them of what a bad idea it would be to leave the cabin, a thunderclap rattles the windows. They all jump.

“It can wait until morning,” Akaashi says. “I’ll just run some cold water over it.”

Suga nods and, still holding Akaashi’s hand, leads him into the kitchen. Oikawa follows them.

“Or maybe it’s aliens,” he says, thinking it over. This _is_ the perfect place for aliens to land. If they’ve set up some kind of base of operations here, of course they don’t want anyone nosing around. Rigging the cabin to kill anyone who stays in it and letting a monster loose in the lake would only make sense if you wanted to protect your alien hideout from prying eyes.

Suga turns on the tap marked hot, mindful of what Akaashi said about them being switched, and waits a moment as the water stutters and then begins to run in a steadier stream. He tests the water with a quick flick of his fingers before he moves Akaashi’s hand under the flow.

“If this place is being actively monitored by aliens who chase off any wandering humans by any means necessary,” Oikawa says, “then it’s no wonder it was so cheap.” He leans against the counter, setting his chin on his closed fist. “Kou-chan,” he says, “how many deaths have been reported at this cabin?”

“Just the one, why?” Suga says, keeping his attention on Akaashi’s hand.

Oikawa jerks upright again. “What?!” he shouts.

“Wait, what?” Akaashi says, staring at Suga along with Oikawa.

Suga looks up at them. “Well,” he says, “someone did die here, but it was years ago and it was just an accident on the lake – nothing weird.”

“What kind of accident?” Oikawa asks. Suga is a darling and an intelligent man, but he often misses the subtler clues that indicate the presence of paranormal and extraterrestrial activity.

“A boating accident,” Suga says. “It didn’t even happen in the cabin, it happened on the lake, but they were staying in the cabin at the time so it came up when I researched the place.”

“And you didn’t tell us?” Oikawa says, scandalized. This is hugely important information! Clearly, they are not the aliens’ first potential victims!

“I knew it would only freak some people –” Suga glances at Oikawa with a disapproving frown before once again setting his attention on Akaashi’s hand “– out, and we came here to relax. I just want us to have a nice time.” He reaches out and shuts off the water. As the water drains – the drain must be clogged; the sink is half-full – Suga looks at Oikawa and Akaashi. “Now that we’ve graduated, we don’t know where we’ll all end up,” he says. “We don’t know how much we’ll get to see each other. You three have been my family, my only family, since I met you. I just want this week to be wonderful.”

Well, now Oikawa feels a bit shitty. Suga is very good at that – at the gentle guilt thing. He will make someone an excellent mother someday.

“We all want that,” Kenma says from right beside Oikawa. Oikawa jumps. He didn’t hear Kenma walk over from the living room. The boy is stealthy as a cat. Kenma leans against Oikawa's side, once again clearly seeking warmth but also, Oikawa thinks, offering comfort. “I think we’ll see each other a lot after this week,” Kenma says, “but I know what you mean, Koushi. You guys are my family, too.”

Oikawa pulls Kenma closer against his side. He loves Kenma. He loves Suga. He loves Akaashi, too, even though he can’t navigate for shit. None of them had families – or, not ones they were close to or could rely on – when they got to college on a blend of scholarships and life savings they’d earned by working their way through high school. Then they found each other. Oikawa and Suga were roommates, Kenma and Akaashi were lab partners who somehow convinced their roommates to trade rooms under the table so they could live together, and then Oikawa met Akaashi at that party and the rest was history. By the end of that year, they were inseparable. Now, they are family.

“Seconded,” Oikawa says, grinning around at the three of them. “We’re family. And this _will_ be an unforgettable week … and not just because of the lake monster and the aliens.”

“Oikawa –” Suga says, sighing, but he is interrupted when the sink makes a sudden and loud rushing, gurgling noise that sounds like some kind of terrifying nightmare creature dying a painful death and desperate to take everyone else with it. They all turn to stare at the sink, which, after the initial burst of sound, quiets to a sucking growl.

Oikawa glares at the sink as it growls away, quietly threatening. Even Suga looks a bit uncomfortable as the sound persists for a somewhat alarming amount of time before finally, at long last, finishing with one last slurping shudder that makes the pipes in the walls groan in sympathy – or in shared murderous intent.

But, no, the cabin isn’t out to kill them at all. And neither are the aliens.

 

* * *

 

Tobio watches the growler arrive with keen interest. It’s a little difficult to see through the rain, but he counts four dudes as they get out of the growler and run towards the cabin. Once they go inside Tobio can’t see them for a while, but, before long, the cabin begins to glow.

He hasn’t ever actually met any dudes. He’s seen them and heard them when they come to the lake to shout loudly on the beach and build their campfires, but he always hides. They’re so loud and rough. They scare him. It’s fun to watch them, but he’s never tried to talk to any of them. He’s never talked to anyone, but he wants to. The dudes he’s seen seem to like talking to each other – though Tobio would never try to talk to any of _them_ – and Tobio often talks to himself or to the fish in the lake, so he thinks he’s ready to try talking to someone who can talk back to him. It seems like a good idea, but the dudes he’s seen on the lakeshore so far have not been … safe.

These dudes seem much quieter.

Once the cabin begins to glow, he can see them inside of it. He likes how they move with each other. They aren’t jumping around with the quick, violent movements that put Tobio on edge. Or, they mostly aren’t doing that. One of them seems a little jumpy, after a bit. Mostly, though, they seem to touch each other gently and to move more slowly than the loud dudes Tobio is used to seeing. Tobio likes that. He thinks these would be good dudes to try to talk to.

After a while, they disappear, walking away from the part of the cabin that’s glowing so he can’t see them anymore. Tobio sinks back into the lake, watching the glow of the cabin from beneath the surface.

He’s glad they’ve come. He’s excited to try to talk to them. Maybe, if he does talk to them, and if they really are as safe as they look from here, these dudes can be his very first friends.

Tobio smiles. His tail swishes excitedly. He can’t wait for tomorrow!


	2. Day Two: Oikawa's Shin

Oikawa wakes up with Suga’s hair in his face. Kenma is pressed against his back, facing away from him as he clings to Akaashi like a barnacle and digs his heels into the backs of Oikawa's legs.

He’s certainly woken up to worse.

None of them were particularly interested in taking their chances with the dubious-looking bunk beds that the cabin comes equipped with last night, so they camped out in the living room instead. Well, it was partly the bunk beds – which look about five decades too old to still be safely in use – and partly the fact that while the woodstove keeps the living room toasty warm, it does absolutely nothing for the rest of the cabin. Even Akaashi, who is normally a living furnace, was cold.

Now, Oikawa is rather warm. The rain stopped sometime during the night – just like Akaashi said it would – and Oikawa can hear birds singing outside. Sunlight is pouring in through the wall of windows along the back wall of the cabin and the lake is positively sparkling in the background. All in all, it isn’t a bad way to wake up.

“Rise and shine, sleepyheads!” Oikawa says, shaking Suga’s shoulder. Suga moans, long and drawn-out, and turns away from Oikawa to lie on his stomach, burying his face in his own crossed arms. Oikawa clucks his tongue at him. “We’re on vacation, Kou-chan,” he chides him. “We need to make the most of it!”

“We’re on vacation, Tooru,” Akaashi says, sounding half-asleep still; “we should get to sleep in.”

“I let you sleep in all the time!” Oikawa says, pushing himself up and leaning back on his hands so he can see Akaashi and Kenma as well as Suga. “I never wake you up before ten! But we’re here, in this beautiful, isolated forest, and there’s a shimmering lake outside just waiting for us!”

“It’s not like it’s going anywhere,” Akaashi says. He shifts, wrapping himself more completely around Kenma. His hand brushes against Oikawa's side as he moves. Kenma sighs and mumbles something that Oikawa doesn’t catch.

“Fine,” Oikawa says. “I’ll go start breakfast while you all wake up.”

“And coffee,” Suga says, not moving.

“And coffee,” Oikawa agrees. He knows how Suga is before he’s had his morning coffee. Normally, he would never dream of waking them up; he likes mornings – he typically gets up by seven a.m. so he can get a jump on things – but he is fully aware that not everyone feels the same way and he respects that … most of the time. But they have limited time here, and they need to make the most of it. They’ll thank him later.

Oikawa shuffles into the kitchen, stretching his back, arms, and shoulders as he walks. He shudders when his bare feet hit the chilly linoleum in the kitchen. The rest of the house is still very cold. This is what they get for renting a cabin in March.

Once he gets to the kitchen and starts looking around he realizes the flaw in their “we’ll just go shopping in the morning” plan. He walks back into the living room.

“So we have no food,” Oikawa informs them.

Akaashi groans.

“Or coffee,” Oikawa adds.

Suga makes a noise like a dying cat and flips himself over to stare at Oikawa in horror. His hair is a fantastic mess and his eyes are wide as saucers. He looks adorable … and ready to kill. “None?” he asks, sounding horrified.

“None,” Oikawa confirms cheerfully. “So if we want breakfast, we’ll have to go out and get it.”

“Nooooo,” Kenma whines, trying to hold onto Akaashi, who is getting up, without actually moving from where he is huddled under the majority of their blankets.

“’m awake now,” Akaashi says, “and I’m hungry. Let’s go find something to eat.”

“Yes!” Oikawa says. He points at Akaashi, grinning. “Let’s go exploring!”

“For food,” Akaashi says. He looks down at Kenma, who has given up on Akaashi and seems to be trying to become one with the blankets now. Akaashi nudges Kenma with his foot. “Get up, Kenma,” he says. “I’m hungry and so are you.”

“No, I’m not,” Kenma says from under the blankets.

“You’re always hungry when you wake up,” Akaashi says. “Get up. You too, Koushi. I don’t want to have to wait for you two.”

Suga, to his credit, hardly grumbles at all as he gets up and goes into the bedroom to get dressed. He does walk into the wall when he misses the doorway into the hall, though. Oikawa loves Morning Suga.

“Kenma,” Akaashi says, nudging Kenma with his foot again. Kenma mumbles something and doesn’t move. Akaashi rolls his eyes and follows Suga back towards the bedroom. He does not walk into the wall.

Oikawa is, himself, not yet dressed, so he follows Suga and Akaashi, leaving Kenma to his own devices. Suga is not a happy person before his morning coffee, but Kenma won’t even get out of bed most days until he’s been awake for at least an hour. Akaashi usually brings him tea and a bagel or something in bed, so he doesn’t even have to get up to get breakfast if he doesn’t want to. Oikawa is of the firm belief that Kenma is spoiled rotten – not that Oikawa can claim innocence in that regard, since pampering Kenma is a go-to activity for all of them; fortunately, Kenma is exactly the sort of person who can be completely catered to by everyone around him and still never expect anything from anyone, maintaining the obliviously angelic demeanor that drew them all in and inadvertently demanded their coddling in the first place.

Still, though, lines have to be drawn. Oikawa is not going to carry Kenma out to the car so he doesn’t have to get up. He _isn’t_.

 

* * *

 

Oikawa does not carry Kenma to the car.

It is a very close thing, though.

 

* * *

 

They find a diner that advertises pancakes and hot coffee without too much trouble. It’s the only diner in town. Suga parks the car as close to the door as he can get them and then almost falls on his face when he gets out. Oikawa offered to drive, but Suga was insistent – _Suga_ rented the car, and so _Suga_ and _only Suga_ will drive the car. It’s the same bullshit argument that led to Suga driving and Akaashi navigating all the way here, because apparently not only does the car-renter get to drive, they also get to decide what everyone else is allowed to do, too.

Next time, Oikawa is going to rent the car and the rest of them can shut up and deal with it, if this is the way Suga wants to play it.

When they walk inside, a little bell over the door rings. The interior of the diner isn’t exactly dirty, but clean isn’t the word that comes to mind to describe it either. Everything is neon pink and teal.

“Anywhere,” a waiter in a neon pink and teal apron tells them, waving his hand around vaguely. There are only a few people in the diner, most of them sitting at the long counter, so most of the tables are free.

Oikawa chooses a table by the door that is completely saturated with sunlight. Hopefully, the bright natural light will help everyone wake up. Kenma does not seem on board with this plan; as soon as they all sit down, Oikawa and Kenma by the windows with Suga and Akaashi beside them, Kenma folds his arms on the table and lays his head on top of them. Akaashi rubs his back with one hand while rearranging the salt and pepper shakers with the other. Kenma closes his eyes.

“Don’t go back to sleep, Ken-chan,” Oikawa warns him. “You’re supposed to be waking up.”

“I am awake,” Kenma says with his eyes closed. He arches his back ever so slightly, catlike, into Akaashi's absentminded touch. Oikawa frowns at him; he is clearly not even trying to wake up. And Akaashi isn’t helping.

“They have coffee, right?” Suga says, squinting in the light. “I feel like I’m dying.”

“It’s eight thirty!” Oikawa says. “It isn’t even that early!”

“For you, maybe, Tooru,” Akaashi says. “Some of us like to sleep.”

“I sleep,” Oikawa says. “I just don’t do it in the morning when the sun is up and there are things to be done.”

“Sleeping is a thing to do,” Kenma mumbles.

“Coffee,” Suga says, blinking repeatedly as he looks around the diner.

Oikawa pats Suga's arm. “I’m sure the waiter will be along any minute,” he says soothingly. Suga groans. Kenma echoes him, tilting his face down and pressing it into his arms. Akaashi makes a sympathetic face at him and moves his hand from Kenma’s back to his hair and begins stroking it.

Fortunately, the waiter is, indeed, along shortly. He even has a coffee pot with him and uses it to fill the four coffee cups that he has dangling from his long fingers. His accent is deliciously regional, but when Oikawa begins to flirt with him – just a little, nothing much – Suga elbows him hard in the ribs and presses his lips into a thin line. Oikawa pouts at him, but Suga is unmoved.

The rest of breakfast is uneventful – unless you count Akaashi literally holding a cup of coffee to Kenma's lips until he drinks some and grabs the cup himself as eventful, and Oikawa has known them for long enough that he doesn’t.

When they leave, Oikawa considers giving the waiter his number, but he decides against it. They’re here to spend time with each other, after all; it isn’t as if he would actually abandon them to hook up with some guy he doesn’t even know – no matter how cute he is.

After breakfast, they buy groceries.

Suga, clearly spooked by this morning’s “catastrophe,” buys a one pound bag of coffee. Oikawa doesn’t remember seeing a coffee pot at the cabin, when he thinks about it, but he doesn’t tell Suga that. Suga would likely buy two coffee machines, just to be safe.

Kenma and Akaashi disappear as soon as they enter the grocery store and show up again twenty minutes later with a cart full of completely reasonable staple foods and a slew of candles and matches.

Oikawa buys the necessary ingredients and supplies for more s’mores than they can possibly eat without dying of sugar poisoning. Someone has to think of these things.

After a minimal amount of bickering over who is paying for what – Oikawa is tempted to pay for everything and then tell Suga that _only Oikawa_ gets to decide who gets to eat s’mores because _he bought them_ , but ultimately he decides that it isn’t worth it; he’ll get Suga back for his rental car dictatorship and his terrible driving some other way – they finish at the store and head back to the cabin.

Suga, who has blossomed into his usual cheery self after consuming three cups of coffee at the diner, suggests sight-seeing in the tiny town on their way back, but when a pass down the “town’s” main street offers nothing but the diner they ate at, the grocery store they just left, a post office, and a kitschy gift shop, it becomes apparent that the town offers no sights to see.

Oikawa just wants to get back to the cabin and swim in the lake. He bought new swim trunks for this trip and everything! He knows Akaashi and Suga are game for it, but he might be losing Kenma. Kenma plugged his Gameboy – which he left in the car last night, apparently – into the car charger as soon as they loaded the groceries into the car and has been checking the battery every thirty seconds since to make sure it’s charging. Oikawa isn’t going to lose to a backlit screen and some 8-bit music without a fight, though.

Once they arrive back at the cabin, Oikawa and Akaashi carry the groceries in and Suga and Kenma put them away. Oikawa confirms that there is, in fact, no coffee machine in the kitchen. Maybe it’s put away under the sink or something. Probably not, though.

“Okay,” Oikawa says, clapping his hands together once everything is put away. “Time to swim!”

“No thanks,” Kenma says, reaching for his Gameboy where he set it on the counter.

“Nu-uh,” Oikawa says, snatching it up before Kenma can get to it. He shakes his head. “We came out here to the glorious wilderness to bath in the beauty of nature, Ken-chan,” he says, “not to stare at video games.”

“It’s a game about nature,” Kenma says. “There are trees.”

“Get your swimsuit on, Ken-chan,” Oikawa tells him. “We’re going swimming.”

Akaashi tugs on Kenma's arm. “You can sit on the dock if you don’t want to get in,” he says. Kenma sighs.

“You’ll have a fabulous time,” Oikawa says. “We all will.”

He hides Kenma's Gameboy in Suga's bag. He’ll give it back – tonight, maybe, or tomorrow. A little fresh air will do Kenma good.

Even Kenma must think so, because he puts up no further fuss as they all change and are doused with sunscreen by Suga, and then he lets Oikawa lead him out of the cabin and down to the dock with both hands on his shoulders. Kenma is wearing a t-shirt, sunglasses, and a big floppy hat that Oikawa gave him two years ago when they all went to the beach together, so he is clearly holding fast to his decision not to swim – for now, at least – but Suga and Akaashi are as eager to get into the water as Oikawa is.

When they reach the dock, Suga hands Kenma the tube of sunscreen, which Kenma takes diligently, and then strips off his shirt. His grin is blinding as he runs the length of the dock and throws himself off the end of it with a shout.

Oikawa laughs at him when he resurfaces, his hair plastered to his head. “How’s the water?” he calls.

“Cold!” Suga shouts back. “It’s really, really cold!”

“It _is_ March,” Akaashi says, shrugging. He and Kenma walk to the end of the dock at a more sedate pace, Oikawa just behind them with his hands still on Kenma's shoulders, and Akaashi waits until Kenma has settled himself against one of the posts along the sides of the dock before stepping to the edge and executing a clean dive into the water. There is almost no splash.

“I don’t think he knows how to be bad at anything,” Oikawa says, watching the small ripples that fan out from where Akaashi broke the surface of the water.

“Except navigate,” Kenma says.

“Well, yes,” Oikawa says.

“Are you getting in or what?” Kenma asks. He lifts a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, pushing up the brim of his big hat to do it.

Rather than answer, Oikawa follows Suga's lead and, with a shout, leaps off the end of the dock.

The water really is very cold.

“It’s freezing!” Oikawa shouts as soon as his head is above water. Suga splashes him, laughing.

“This was your idea,” Suga says, grinning at him. “Enjoying the beauty of nature and all that.”

“Nature doesn’t have to be so _cold_ ,” Oikawa grumbles. Something occurs to him then and he looks at Suga in alarm. “We aren’t going to get hypothermia, are we?” he asks. He has no idea how cold this water actually is. People go swimming in the Arctic Ocean, of course, and they don’t die – somehow – but Oikawa isn’t quite sure why that is and he’s pretty sure he remembers his grandfather giving him a stern lecture when he was eight about how if he fell in the river he would die because it was December and –

“We’re fine,” Akaashi says. “We won’t want to hang around wet for too long when we’re done, but we won’t get hypothermia. I checked the water temperature and the air temperature on the weather app before I got dressed.”

Of course Akaashi did.

“Of course you did,” Suga says.

Akaashi does not respond. He swims back to the dock and pulls himself onto it, saying something to Kenma that Oikawa is too far away to hear, waiting a moment for the response – whatever it is makes him smile – and then executing another perfect dive back into the water. What a showoff.

Oikawa begins to swim back to the dock too, but he freezes when he feels something touch his leg. It feels like fingers.

Suddenly, he remembers about the lake monster.

How the _hell_ did he forget about the _lake monster_?

“Suga!” Oikawa shouts, taking off towards the dock as fast as he can. “Keiji! Get out of the water!”

“What?” Akaashi says, staring at him from where he’s treading water beside the dock.

“Get out of the water!” Oikawa shouts again. “Now!”

Akaashi turns and pulls himself onto the dock. When Oikawa swims up to it, Akaashi and Kenma both reach out to help him up. Oikawa turns, looking frantically for Suga, who reaches the dock a moment later and is immediately pulled up as well.

Oikawa scans the water, searching for any sign of the lake monster. He sees a ripple out a ways, disturbing the clean surface of the lake. His skin prickles with goosebumps.

“What happened?” Suga asks. He grabs Oikawa's arm, trying to turn Oikawa to face him, but Oikawa is still looking out at the lake, at the dissipating ripples. “Tooru,” Suga says, “what’s wrong?”

“The lake monster,” Oikawa says. His chest is heaving. He feels high on adrenaline. The lake monster _grabbed_ him! It almost _got_ him!

“Oh my –” Suga lets go of Oikawa's arm and takes a step back. “Seriously, Tooru?”

“I felt it grab my leg,” Oikawa tells him. He glances away from the lake and catches Suga's expression. Suga does not look pleased – or like he believes a word Oikawa is saying. “I did!” Oikawa says, raising his voice and turning to meet Suga's eyes. “It _grabbed me_!”

“There is no lake monster,” Suga says calmly. “I’m sure it was just a fish.”

“It was _fingers_ ,” Oikawa insists.

“Maybe someone else is staying on the lake too,” Kenma says. “Maybe it was someone who thought it’d be funny to freak you out.” He looks uncomfortable at the thought. It _would_ be a disturbing thought if it weren’t such a comparatively pleasant alternative to the lake monster.

“No,” Suga says, addressing Kenma in a reassuring voice, “there aren’t any other cabins for rent on this lake right now; most of the land was bought out by a development a few months ago and they’re still doing construction before they open their rentals for the summer. We’re completely alone out here.”

“See?” Oikawa says, feeling validated.

“Which doesn’t mean it was a lake monster,” Suga says, frowning at him. “No other renters and something touching your leg does not equal lake monster – it equals fish.”

“It wasn’t a fish,” Oikawa says. He _knows_ it wasn’t a fish. Fish do not feel like fingers brushing against your shin.

“If there’s no one else on the lake,” Kenma says, looking away and speaking slowly, as if he’s weighing his words, “then who left these shells here?”

Oikawa looks where Kenma is looking. On each of the posts around the dock is a small pile of shells – no, not a pile, a stack. The shells are neatly stacked and clean, as if they were washed before they were set up in their tidy little towers.

“Probably the last renter,” Suga says.

“And the storm last night didn’t blow them away?” Akaashi says, also staring at the shells. “The winds were pretty rough, and the rain came down more than hard enough to knock over something as small as these shells.”

“They must be glued down, then,” Suga says. He steps over to the nearest post and reaches down to the stack of shells. He flicks it with his fingers and it topples over, the shells falling into the water with a series of small plops.

“Not a lake monster,” Oikawa says. A lake monster couldn’t do that. It would have to be something with fingers. Something like – “Aliens.”

“They’re just shells!” Suga says. “I don’t know how they got here, but there is a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe someone came and put them here while we were out this morning. Maybe a walking trail goes by the cabin or a local likes to come down here for the view and they set them here. Maybe it was birds.”

“Maybe it was birds?” Akaashi echoes. He levels an unimpressed look at Suga.

“I give up,” Suga says, throwing his hands in the air. “I’m going inside.”

“Yes,” Oikawa says, hurrying after him. He grabs Kenma’s and Akaashi's hands and tows them along with him. “We shouldn’t be out by the lake,” he tells them, speed walking towards the cabin. “The aliens are clearly out for human flesh now.”

“There are no aliens,” Suga calls back from ahead of them.

Oikawa doesn’t bother correcting him. He’ll see soon enough. The aliens won’t be satisfied until they have what they want now. It’s only a matter of time before they show themselves. They have to be ready.

Once they are all inside, Oikawa closes the back door firmly behind them and locks it. Suga rolls his eyes, grabbing a towel and drying himself off as he walks into the kitchen to see about lunch. Akaashi follows him, also rubbing himself dry as he goes. Kenma collapses onto the couch and closes his eyes; he leans over a bit, slowly listing to the side until he topples over and buries his face in the cushions.

“I’m sure it was just a fish, Tooru,” Kenma says. His voice is muffled by the couch cushions, but Oikawa can still hear the reassuring note in it.

Oikawa scowls. “It was not a fish,” he says. It _wasn’t_. “And don’t patronize me,” he adds.

“Okay,” Kenma says. “Come cuddle me; I’m cold.”

Oikawa sighs. He drops onto the couch next to Kenma and drapes himself over his back.

Kenma immediately pushes him off, knocking Oikawa onto the floor.

“Ow!” Oikawa says, staring up at Kenma in shock.

“Go dry off,” Kenma says, settling down again after jarring himself to shove Oikawa away. “Then come back and cuddle me.”

“So mean, Ken-chan,” Oikawa says, pouting at him. Kenma doesn’t look at him; he just wraps his arms around a ratty throw pillow.

Now that Kenma has pointed it out, Oikawa _is_ rather cold. He gets up and snags one of the towels that they laid out on the back of the couch before they went out and starts drying himself off. Once he’s done, he tosses the towel over the back of the couch to air out and sits on the couch by Kenma again. This time, he wraps his arms around Kenma's waist as he lies pretty much on top of him, holding on so Kenma won’t throw him again. Kenma hums in contentment.

For a while, they are quiet. It isn’t the most comfortable Oikawa has ever been, but it’s not bad. He’s content to stay here for a bit, let his heart rate finish calming down after the adrenaline rush of the encounter with the lake monster – alien – whatever it is. He uses Kenma's steady breathing as a guide, copying the pattern of it, and it does calm him down. He’s actually feeling a bit sleepy when Kenma speaks.

“I do believe that you felt something in the lake, Tooru,” Kenma says quietly.

“And soon enough I’ll prove that it was an alien,” Oikawa says, equally quietly. “Or an alien’s pet monster, or something. You’ll see.”

Oikawa knows what he felt in the lake. He felt fingers. Simple lake monsters don’t have fingers. Simple lake monsters don’t set up clean lake shells in carefully balanced towers like some kind of modern art or code or something. This is not a simple lake monster they are dealing with here.

This is an intelligent monster indeed.

 

* * *

 

Tobio watches from just beneath the surface of the lake as the dudes go back inside the cabin. He frowns. He didn’t want them to get out of the water. He liked watching them swim – the way they thrash around to get from one place to another is pretty funny. Tobio is glad he has a tail to make swimming easy. He would hate to look as ridiculous as the dudes do.

He just wanted to know what their skin feels like. He wanted to know if their skin is soft like his upper half or rough and scaly like his tail. It’s soft. It was interesting to touch it. But the dude clearly did not like being touched. Tobio is sorry he did it now. He definitely won’t touch them again.

He needs to try something else. He’s still too uncertain to go right up to them, but he wants to do something to let them know he’s here.

Maybe he should set out more shells. They seemed to like those – he saw them looking at the shells before they went inside. That’s it. He’ll set up even more shells for them tonight and maybe – maybe some kind of message. Something friendly.

Tobio smiles. He knows exactly what to do.


	3. Day Three: “They’re coming for us.”

No one is listening to him.

Oikawa has been trying to impress the seriousness of the situation upon the rest of them since yesterday after his near-death experience with the alien lake monster, but none of them will budge. Suga insists there is no lake monster. Akaashi ignores him. Kenma nods encouragingly in a blatant display of condescension that is not at all appreciated.

“There are only two explanations, really,” Oikawa says, leaning his head back against the cabinet. “Either the cabin’s owners have no idea what kind of death trap this place is, what with the aliens and all, _or_ – and hear me out, now – they are, themselves, the very aliens who are even now trying to kill us.”

“I’m trying to concentrate,” Suga says, not looking up from the cabin printout he has set on the counter by the stovetop. He’s been trying to turn on the stove for nearly an hour now. Apparently, lighting the damn thing requires the flipping of multiple switches in the creepy basement, the manipulation of a series of complicated knobs on the stovetop itself, and possibly a blood sacrifice. So far, Suga has had no true success in his endeavors.

“They aren’t trying to scare people off with the lake monster and the death cabin,” Oikawa says, thinking it through; “they use the cabin to lure in their victims, and then they have their pet lake monster grab them when they go for a dip. Who knows what their nefarious purposes are beyond that.”

“Please shut up,” Suga says. He twists one of the knobs on the stove. Nothing happens. Suga sighs.

“Probably experimentation,” Oikawa says. Aliens are always looking to experiment on humans. Who knows what it is about human physiology that makes them such attractive test subjects to extraterrestrial lifeforms, but humans seem to draw aliens like bees to honey.

“The cabin owners are not aliens,” Suga says. “They’re very nice. I spoke to them on the phone to confirm the booking.”

“Voice altering software,” Oikawa says. “And of course they seemed nice – it would hardly be an effective trap if they went and scared off any potential renters, now would it?”

“He’ll let it go if we just ignore him,” Akaashi says. He and Kenma are sitting at the rickety kitchen table that is shoved up against the wall in the corner by the refrigerator. Kenma is playing his Gameboy and Akaashi has some kind of horrible puzzle book open on the table, but he’s actually spent most of the past hour playing with Kenma's hair.

“That fish really freaked him out,” Kenma says, keeping his eyes on the screen of his Gameboy.

“It was _not_ a fish,” Oikawa says. He frowns at Kenma. “You’re supposed to be on my side, remember?”

“Sorry, Tooru,” Kenma says. “Tell us more about the aliens.”

“I would refuse,” Oikawa says, haughtily, “on principle because of your tone, but we really do need to be preparing for their next move. I’m thinking a preemptive strike.”

“Against what?” Akaashi asks, running a bit of Kenma's hair through his fingers.

“Against the _aliens_ ,” Oikawa says. It’s like nothing he’s been saying has gotten through. “We need to be prepared.”

“We need to get this stove to work or all of the chicken we bought yesterday will go to waste,” Suga says. He turns to Akaashi and Kenma. “Will one of you come look at this, please?” he says, gesturing at the cabin printout where he has it open to the instructions for the kitchen appliances. “I can’t figure it out.”

Akaashi lets Kenma's hair filter through his fingers and then stands, crossing the kitchen to the stove. Suga gestures, again, at the cabin printout. Akaashi leans his hip against the counter as he looks it over.

Oikawa looks up at the two of them from his position on the floor. “We need to be prepared,” he says again. This is a serious matter. He’s made a lot of jokes about horror movies since they got here, but things have gotten serious now. There’s an alien monster in the lake. There are aliens out there, somewhere, just waiting for the moment to pounce and abduct them and run all kinds of experiments of various but all equally ungodly natures on them.

Suga and Akaashi both ignore him as they lean over the cabin printout together.

“No one listens to me,” Oikawa moans, rolling his head back and forth against the cabinet he’s leaning against. He kicks his feet a little, too, for extra effect.

“I’m listening to you, Tooru,” Kenma says, his eyes fixed on his Gameboy.

“But you don’t believe me,” Oikawa says.

“I believe that you believe it,” Kenma says placidly.

“If we all die, I’m blaming the three of you,” Oikawa informs them. He’s tried to warn them. They just won’t listen. You can lead a horse to water, and all that. Only, in this case, they need to _stay away_ from the water. And arm themselves. The aliens aren’t going to just let them walk away – not now that they’re onto them and their pet lake monster, not now that they know the truth.

“I think they meant the opposite of this,” Akaashi says, pointing to something on the printout.

“Maybe,” Suga says, nodding hopefully.

Akaashi reaches out and fiddles with a knob on the stove, then flips a switch. Nothing happens.

“It’s broken,” Akaashi says. Then he turns around and walks back to the table, dropping into his chair and immediately reaching for Kenma's hair again. Kenma tilts his head a bit to make it easier for Akaashi but does not look up from his Gameboy.

“Don’t just give up!” Suga says, frowning at Akaashi. When Akaashi does not move or give any indication that he intends to continue battling the stove with Suga, Suga huffs and turns around. “I’ll just figure it out by myself, then,” he mutters.

“It hurts to be ignored, doesn’t it, Kou-chan?” Oikawa says.

“You aren’t helping either,” Suga says, rather tartly.

“No,” Oikawa counters, “none of _you_ are helping. I’m the only one thinking about the aliens.”

“Why don’t we just have sandwiches?” Akaashi suggests. He looks up from Kenma's hair to nod at the loaf of bread sitting on the counter. “We don’t need the stove for that.”

“But we bought all that chicken,” Suga says. He sounds sad and regretful, but the signs of impending capitulation are evident. He looks from the stove to the bread, hesitant.

“We can cook it on a fire in tinfoil tonight,” Akaashi says. “I saw a roll of it in one of the cabinets.”

“Are you crazy?” Oikawa demands. “A fire will attract the aliens!”

“Perfect,” Suga says. He nods decisively. “Sandwiches it is.”

“No fires,” Oikawa says. No one acknowledges him. Suga is getting out lunch meat, cheese, and lettuce from the fridge while Akaashi walks over and opens the bread, counting out how many slices they’ll need, and Kenma saves his level and then gets up to pull a bag of chips out of one of the cabinets. Oikawa will clearly have to make his case again tonight to these reckless, disbelieving fools. He loves them, but they really do have no sense of self-reservation sometimes.

“How many sandwiches do you want, Tooru?” Akaashi asks.

“Two, please, Kei-chan,” Oikawa says. “And a side of the ability to get my friends to listen to me.”

“Two it is,” Akaashi says, pulling two more slices of bread from the bag. “As for the other, maybe you should try talking more common sense and less conspiracy theories.”

“You’re so mean, Kei-chan,” Oikawa says. “Don’t come crying to me if the aliens get you first.”

“If the aliens take me,” Akaashi says, keeping his eyes on what he’s doing as he and Suga pass sandwich supplies back and forth, “I will issue you a full apology.”

“I’ll read it at your funeral,” Oikawa tells him.

“Let’s eat by the lake,” Suga says, grinning brightly, as if he hasn’t just proposed the stupidest, most reckless idea in the history of human and alien relations.

“ _No_ ,” Oikawa says, but Akaashi hums his agreement and Kenma nods at Suga – the traitor. Oikawa groans in frustration. How is he supposed to keep them all alive and out of the hands of aliens if they are so determined to act without any regard for their personal safety?

“Oikawa, get the napkins, would you?” Suga asks, spreading condiments on the bread.

“If the lake monster gets you, I claim no responsibility,” Oikawa says. He does get up and gets the napkins, though.

If they’re going to risk their lives, he’s hardly going to let them do it alone.

 

* * *

 

They sit by the lake to eat lunch, which is fine. Oikawa keeps an eye on the water and sees no suspicious activity at all. He is, in fact, just beginning to relax when Kenma ruins it by getting up and wandering onto the dock.

“Ken-chan!” Oikawa calls, stumbling to his feet to hurry after him. “I thought we agreed to stay thirty feet back from the water!”

“I was just wondering,” Kenma says, continuing down the dock until he is standing at the end. He stops, then, and looks down. “Huh,” he says.

Oikawa stops beside him, breathing a bit heavily from running to catch up. “Ken-chan,” he says, but Kenma interrupts him.

“They put them back,” Kenma says.

“What?” Oikawa asks. He knows, though, even before Kenma points to the post. Oikawa feels cold, suddenly, in the light breeze, as he stares at Kenma. Kenma looks … not quite afraid, but uncertain and confused and maybe a bit apprehensive. Oikawa can relate.

“Look,” Kenma says, staring down at the post. It’s the post that had the shells on it yesterday – the ones that Suga knocked off.

Oikawa looks down. The shells are back. Once again, every post along the dock, on both sides, has a tidy little stack of shells on top of it – but it isn’t just stacks anymore; now, intricate patterns of more shells and small, multi-colored stones, worn smooth by the lake, have been laid out around the stacks of shells. It would be charming if it wasn’t making Oikawa feel slightly sick.

“It must be hikers, like Suga said,” Kenma says quietly.

“It’s a message,” Oikawa says. “From the aliens.”

“It isn’t –”

Kenma is interrupted by a cut-off shout from the edge of the lake. Oikawa and Kenma both whip around to look and see Suga standing at the edge of the water … alone.

Akaashi is nowhere in sight.

Oikawa runs.

Kenma is behind him, nearly keeping up as they both race back to where Suga is standing, expression shocked and hands over his mouth.

“Did it get him?” Oikawa shouts as he sprints down the dock towards Suga. “Suga, where’s Keiji?”

“Keiji!” Kenma shouts from behind Oikawa. He sounds frantic.

Just before Oikawa reaches Suga, Kenma a bit behind him, the surface of the lake breaks. Oikawa turns, digging his foot into the dirt without slowing down to change course and run towards the lake.

Akaashi surfaces, heaving and choking on the deep breaths he’s taking.

“Keiji!” Kenma shouts again, suddenly passing Oikawa and throwing himself into the lake towards where Akaashi is treading water.

“Kenma, don’t!” Akaashi calls.

Oikawa is half a step behind Kenma, charging into the shallows at the lake’s edge, when Kenma abruptly drops beneath the lake’s surface and vanishes.

“Kenma!” Oikawa shouts, grabbing for him. He can’t catch him. He’s about to dive, to try to wrestle Kenma from the lake monster and _bring him back_ , but before he can do it the ground is gone and he’s pitching forward, plunging beneath the surface of the lake.

He didn’t take a breath – he didn’t have time – and Oikawa inhales water when he breathes in reflexively. He chokes. He doesn’t know how far from the surface he is – he doesn’t even know _which way_ the surface is.

His lungs hurt, a sharp pain.

His vision greys.

Oh my god, he’s drowning.

Then there are hands on him, pulling him up to the surface, and then there is air again.

Oikawa sucks in deep breathes, coughing and choking on the water still in his throat. He lets whoever has him drag him towards the shore, too lightheaded to protest. He really hopes the lake monster doesn’t have him. There’s water in his eyes. His limbs feel rubbery.

Someone else grabs him as well, and the two of them – whoever they are – heave Oikawa up and then half-carry-half-drag him out of the water and onto the sand at the edge of the lake. Oikawa can’t stop coughing. Someone pushes him onto his side, and that helps a bit.

His lungs are _burning_.

“Tooru,” Suga says, very loudly, right by Oikawa's ear. “Tooru, just take deep breathes, okay?”

That’s what he’s _trying_ to do.

Suga strokes his hair, which is nice, brushing it back from Oikawa's face in repetitive motions. “You’re okay,” he says, sounding panicky and just a little hysterical. “You’re okay.”

“Are _you_ okay”? Oikawa asks him. His voice comes out very rough. Talking makes Oikawa cough.

Suga laughs. That _definitely_ sounds hysterical.

“Is Tooru all right?” Kenma asks from somewhere outside of Oikawa's range of vision, also sounding rather rough.

“He’s fine,” Akaashi says, also out of Oikawa's sight. “Everyone is fine.”

“What happened?” Oikawa asks. He tries to push himself up so he can sit and see everyone, but Suga grabs his shoulder, wide-eyed. “I’m just sitting up, Koushi,” Oikawa tells him. Suga hesitates, but then he nods and helps Oikawa sit up. Even after Oikawa is upright, Suga keeps his hand on Oikawa's shoulder. Oikawa doesn’t mind it at all.

Kenma and Akaashi are huddled together right beside where Oikawa and Suga are sitting. Both of them are soaking wet. Kenma looks shell-shocked and is clinging to Akaashi. Akaashi also looks rather frazzled and is clinging to Kenma right back.

“What happened?” Oikawa asks again, looking from Akaashi and Kenma to Suga. He looks back at Akaashi when he speaks, his voice wry and self-deprecating.

“There’s a drop-off there, apparently,” Akaashi says. “I was walking in the shallows and then I discovered it. It surprised me.”

“Me too,” Oikawa says. “Surprised” is a pretty enormous understatement. Oikawa's hands are still shaking.

“I thought you – I thought it –” Kenma says, and then stops himself. He shakes his head, twisting his fingers in the fabric of Akaashi's shirt.

“I’m fine,” Akaashi says soothingly. “We’re all fine. No one was hurt – just surprised.”

“I almost _drowned_ ,” Oikawa says, coughing again – not for effect, but simply because talking still hurts. And so do his lungs. Ow. “I think I’m a little more than surprised,” he adds.

“You didn’t drown, though,” Suga says sharply. “No one drowned.”

“And no one was gotten by the lake monster,” Oikawa says. His eyes go wide, then, when he realizes. He sits up straighter, pointing at Kenma. “You thought the lake monster got Kei-chan!” he cries. “You nearly said it, just now! You thought the lake monster got him!”

“I didn’t say that,” Kenma says, shaking his head.

“You almost did!” Oikawa says. He grins at Kenma, suddenly feeling a lot more upbeat than he did a moment ago. “You believe me, Ken-chan!”

“I didn’t say that,” Kenma says, but he doesn’t sound at all convincing. Oikawa knows now. He knows that Kenma knows. And Kenma knows that Oikawa knows that Kenma knows – there’s no use denying it now.

“You nearly did, though,” Oikawa says. He is feeling so validated right now. “You _believe_ me.”

Kenma doesn’t answer. He leans his head against Akaashi's chest and closes his eyes. Akaashi wraps his arms around Kenma and presses their bodies as close together as they can get.

Suga clears his throat. “Well,” he says, “we should go change out of these wet clothes. It’s pretty chilly out here, even in the sun.”

“An excellent idea, Kou-chan,” Oikawa says. “And then Ken-chan and I can discuss our plans to fend off the aliens when they inevitably attack – now that Ken-chan believes me, you know.”

“I didn’t say that,” Kenma mumbles. Akaashi pulls him to his feet and the two of them begin stumbling towards the cabin, still wrapped around each other.

Suga helps Oikawa to his feet as well, switching his grip from Oikawa's shoulder to his wrist once Oikawa is upright. Oikawa very nearly drowned just now, but he still feels a lot better than Suga looks.

“Relax, Kou-chan,” Oikawa tells him. “Everyone’s fine.”

“I know,” Suga says. He takes a deep breath, obviously bracing himself.

Oikawa pats his arm and tugs his wrist out of Suga's grip so he can take Suga's hand and lace their fingers together. Suga relaxes a little once he’s done it.

Before they go back to the cabin, Oikawa turns for one last look at the lake.

That’s when he notices it.

“Kou-chan,” Oikawa whispers, tugging on Suga's hand.

“What, Tooru?” Suga asks, his attention directed away from the lake, back towards the cabin.

“Kou-chan, look,” Oikawa says, keeping his voice low. He can’t look away. His lungs are seizing up all over again, and he isn’t even drowning this time.

Finally, Suga turns to look.

Oikawa knows when Suga sees it, because Suga freezes, his fingers going tight and stiff in Oikawa's hand.

At the edge of the lake, just beyond the reach of the water, rocks about the size of Oikawa's fist have been arranged in the sand. They have been arranged into words, spelling out a message.

“‘Welcome to hell,’” Suga reads, his voice hollow.

Oikawa shudders, staring at the rocks, his mind jumping from one thing to the next too quickly to form any coherent thought except one.

“They’re coming for us.”

 

* * *

 

The dudes seem to enjoy the shells on the dock again, but they don’t stay to look at them for very long. Tobio is a bit disappointed by that. He spent most of last night setting the shells up, and only two of the dudes even went out onto the dock to look at them, and then they ran off pretty much right away when one of the others made a loud noise and jumped into the water.

After watching the four of them thrash around by the edge of the lake, Tobio is even less impressed with their swimming. It was like they were trying to look ridiculous.

They shouted a lot, too. “Keiji” and “Kenma, don’t” are the only things that Tobio heard clearly. The water distorts things a bit, and he didn’t want to break the surface when they were all behaving so erratically. He’s pretty sure they shouted “Keiji” multiple times, though. Tobio wonders what it means.

He has an idea, then.

Whatever “Keiji” means, it clearly means something to them. And if his shells and the message on the beach aren’t working – he doesn’t know if they even _saw_ his message on the beach, which is very disappointing because it took a very long time to write it out; he had to keep swimming back to the sign on the other side of the lake to make sure he was doing it right, but he thought it would be worth it because lots of dudes stop and look at the sign and they usually smile or laugh at it, and so Tobio thought that maybe, whatever the symbols on it are, it means something important and pleasant, but they didn’t even _see it_ , probably – then maybe he should try to communicate in a way that he knows they understand.

Tonight, he’ll try it. He isn’t quite brave enough to try to get their attention when they might come out and see him, and he will have to be above the surface for this. So he’ll try it tonight, once the sun goes down.

And if this doesn’t work, he’ll just try something else after that.


	4. Day Four: Tinfoil Hats

Oikawa has never felt more terrified or more alive than he does at this very moment. If he tried, he’s pretty sure he could totally do that thing crazy people do where they walk through fire like maniacs without even getting burned. He could totally do that right now, if he wanted to. He’s sure of it. He feels _invincible_.

And terrified. He feels completely terrified, too.

The misleading feeling of invincibility is probably due to the nine cups of coffee he has consumed in the past four hours.

The terror is entirely due to the aliens.

“Ken-chan, pass me the hammer, would you?” Oikawa says, holding out his hand. Kenma places the hammer in his hand and then offers a nail before Oikawa even has to ask. “Thank you, Ken-chan,” Oikawa says pleasantly.

Kenma has been much more helpful and generally on-board with what’s going on here ever since yesterday at the lake. He definitely believed Oikawa about the lake monster before that – Oikawa is certain of it – but getting him to admit it has been a game-changer.

Oikawa nails the board in place over the window and then steps back to examine his work. There is not an inch of glass visible anymore on the back wall of the cabin. Nothing can spy on them now.

“I think we should do the roof next,” Oikawa says, “since we’ve finished with all of the windows down here now.”

Kenma nods, gathering the wood that they have left into a pile.

“The two of you need to stop this,” Suga says. He is obviously aiming for a disapproving tone of voice, but if he wanted to hit it he shouldn’t have had eight cups of coffee in last hour and a half. Every inch of him is vibrating and it’s throwing his disapproval off, edging it with an agitation that undermines his supposed rationality in the face of Oikawa and Kenma's supposed irrationality.

Really, Suga's anxiety is only serving to help make Oikawa's point for him.

“You’ll thank us when the aliens come and we have the advantage because they can’t see what we’re doing, Kou-chan,” Oikawa tells him. “I don’t imagine that we can really keep them out, of course, but we can slow them down, and in a fight to the death that can make all the difference.”

“I’m just humoring him,” Kenma says to Suga.

Oikawa knows that Kenma is lying. Suga knows that Kenma is lying. Kenma knows that they all know that he is lying. Yet, he continues to lie. That’s fine. Oikawa doesn’t care if Kenma needs to pretend to not believe what’s happening – if it helps him cope, then Oikawa is happy to let Kenma say whatever he likes about not buying in – because it doesn’t change the fact that Kenma is helping Oikawa fortify the cabin against the impending alien attack.

“Humor me by helping me carry all of this up to the attic, Ken-chan,” Oikawa says. “There’s a rope hanging down in the hall that’s tucked over the bathroom doorway – it must be attached to a staircase to get up there.”

“Why don’t you leave Kenma out of your crazy conspiracy theories, Tooru?” Akaashi says, frowning at him from the couch. “If you want to spend your time running around nailing boards over all the windows, go ahead, but leave Kenma alone.”

“I’m not forcing him!” Oikawa says. He _isn’t_. Oikawa simply stated his intention to fortify the cabin against the aliens and Kenma offered to help. Kenma told Suga and Akaashi that he was only doing it to calm Oikawa down, but Oikawa knows. Kenma can’t fool him. Kenma _believes_.

“It’s fine, Keiji,” Kenma says. “I don’t mind.”

“ _I_ mind,” Akaashi grumbles.

“You could help us, Kei-chan,” Oikawa says. He leans down to collect the last of the wood from the floor. They don’t have much left, but this should be enough. They can just nail the attic trapdoor shut if it comes to that, after all.

“We came here to relax,” Akaashi says tersely, “not to play alien invasion.”

“No one here thinks this is a game except for you, Kei-chan,” Oikawa says. He meets Akaashi's eyes steadily. “And even you don’t think that,” he says. “After all, it wasn’t _my_ name the aliens were calling last night.”

“Shut up,” Akaashi snaps. He jerks his book up, holding it in front of his face.

Oikawa clucks his tongue at him.

“Come on, Ken-chan,” Oikawa says. “Let’s take a look at the attic situation.”

The rope in the hallway does, indeed, connect to a trapdoor in the ceiling that drops a ladder into the middle of the hall, allowing access to the attic. Calling it an attic might be a bit generous, though – it’s really more of a crawlspace.

“The good news is,” Oikawa calls down to Kenma, who is waiting at the base of the ladder, “we can probably just nail the trapdoor shut and be done with it. There aren’t any windows and nothing much can fit up here anyway.”

“We’ll need a ladder to reach up there once the trapdoor is put up,” Kenma points out.

“Yeah,” Oikawa agrees. He turns to climb back down, getting ready to say something about looking around outside to see if there’s a ladder anywhere on the property, but something catches his eye in the corner of the attic. Oikawa pauses and then leans closer to get a better look. The attic is quite dark and it’s difficult to make out what the thing in the corner is, but Oikawa is curious now. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and turns the flashlight on, aiming the light at the corner.

It’s a corpse.

“Shit!” he shouts, jerking back and fumbling with his phone. It slips out of his hands, falling below him as he loses and then tries desperately to regain his balance on the ladder.

“Shit!” Kenma echoes him from the bottom of the ladder.

Oikawa is only dimly aware of this. Mostly, Oikawa is aware of falling off of the ladder, trying to shout a warning, and then landing on top of Kenma in a heap on the floor.

“Ow,” Oikawa mumbles.

“What happened?” Suga demands, suddenly standing over them. His hair is wild, standing straight up in places like Oikawa has never seen it do before. Oikawa isn’t sure how much coffee Suga has actually had in the past twelve hours or so, but it is definitely more than is healthy.

“I fell,” Oikawa says.

“Get off me,” Kenma says, shoving at him.

Oikawa whines but moves. He looks at Kenma, who is scowling but doesn’t seem to be hurt.

“Kenma!” Akaashi says, also suddenly appearing in the hall. He immediately drops to his knees on the floor next to Kenma and grabs Kenma's shoulder, his eyes scanning over him hurriedly. “Are you hurt? What happened? Did you fall?” Akaashi asks, rapid-fire.

“Tooru fell,” Kenma says, frowning at Oikawa. “On top of me. Are you okay, Tooru?”

“I’m fine,” Oikawa says. “Are you okay, Ken-chan?”

“Fine,” Kenma says.

“Oh my god, you’re trying to give me a heart attack,” Suga says, turning and walking quickly away.

“We love you too, Kou-chan!” Oikawa calls after him. Then he looks at Akaashi, who is staring at Kenma with wide eyes while Kenma sits up and pokes at his elbow where he seems to have bumped it – or maybe Oikawa fell on it. “Really, are you okay, Ken-chan?” Oikawa asks.

“You didn’t really hurt me,” Kenma says. “I might be a bit bruised, though.”

“You should come lie down,” Akaashi says immediately. He tugs on Kenma's arm, trying to pull him to his feet.

Kenma allows Akaashi to help him stand, but then, instead of following Akaashi towards the living room, he reaches down to help Oikawa up. Oikawa takes his hand with a grin.

“We should go look for that ladder,” Kenma says, offering Oikawa's phone back to him.

Oikawa takes it and shoves it back in his pocket. Then, he remembers why he dropped it – what he saw.

“Oh!” Oikawa says. He grabs Kenma's arm, pulling him close and dropping his voice. “I found something in the attic,” Oikawa says, speaking quietly. They may have boarded up all of the windows, but what he saw in the attic proves that the aliens have been inside the cabin before. They might be listening.

“Was it mold?” Akaashi asks. “That’s the last thing we need.”

“It was a body!” Oikawa hisses, looking from Kenma to Akaashi and back again. Kenma's eyes go wide. Even Akaashi pauses and stares at Oikawa. Oikawa nods at them both. “In the corner of the attic,” he says, gesturing upwards. Kenma and Akaashi both follow his movement, looking up. “It’s a corpse,” Oikawa continues lowly, “all bones.”

“Then it’s a skeleton,” Akaashi says, deadpan, dropping his gaze from the ceiling to look at Oikawa again. “Corpses have flesh on them.” Akaashi looks – as he has looked pretty much constantly since the screaming started last night – completely unamused and edging towards an act of violence. The corner of his eye is twitching, a clear indicator of dangerous levels of stress, but he still has the presence of mind for sass. Oikawa knew there was a reason he loved him. Now, however, is really not the _time._

“There’s a dead person in the attic and you’re worried about terminology?” Oikawa demands. “The aliens must have left it there!” He drops his voice again, realizing he raised it without meaning to. “It must be their last victim,” he hisses, leaning in close to the two of them.

“Kenma, come sit down,” Akaashi says, abruptly turning away from Oikawa and tugging on Kenma's arm again.

“We should find a ladder,” Kenma says, ignoring Akaashi and still staring up, as if he will be able to see through the ceiling if he looks long enough. “We need to nail that door shut.”

“Kenma,” Akaashi says.

“There might be one by the carport,” Oikawa says to Kenma. At least _someone_ is taking this seriously.

Oikawa moves past Akaashi, brushing against him in the narrow hallway, and heads for the back door. He feels a bit smug when Kenma follows him despite Akaashi's continued protests. Suga can self-medicate with coffee and Akaashi can deny if they want to, but Kenma believes him.

It feels good to not be alone in this anymore.

 

* * *

 

Once the trap door to the attic is nailed shut – a feat accomplished by Kenma sitting on Oikawa's shoulders when a ladder could not be found – Oikawa and Kenma go to sit in the living room with Akaashi and Suga.

As soon as Oikawa sits down, Suga hands him a cup of coffee. He moved the coffee maker into the living room sometime around two a.m. when it became clear that none of them would be sleeping last night and he’s been steadily powering through their supply of coffee ever since. With how they’ve all been working through it since last night, Oikawa can no longer mock Suga for his original one pound of coffee purchase or for his subsequent purchases of a coffee maker and a second one pound bag when he realized yesterday morning that the cabin did not have a coffee maker in it. It turns out that Suga's ridiculous purchases were prescient.

Oikawa takes the cup with a grateful smile and inhales deeply before sipping at it. His nose scrunches up at the taste, but he doesn’t bother to complain; there isn’t anything he can do about it, so he might as well just deal with it. Oikawa likes his coffee with cream and sugar – _lots_ of cream and sugar – and Suga takes his black and unsweetened and so Suga did not buy anything to doctor the coffee up with, leaving all four of them with black, unsweetened coffee or no coffee at all.

Today, everyone is drinking it black.

Akaashi is staring at the boards that now cover the wall of windows. He isn’t blinking much. Kenma is sitting beside him, pressed against his side with his head on Akaashi's shoulder and his eyes closed. Akaashi has his arm around Kenma but his attention is clearly elsewhere – on the lake.

None of them slept last night. It would have been impossible to with all the screaming.

Oikawa isn’t sure if the aliens meant the shouts as a warning or a lure. Whatever their intentions, all they accomplished was seriously freaking all four of them out. Shouting “Keiji” over and over again for hours straight, from sundown till sunup, always in a desperate, terrified voice, was either a brilliant move in a campaign of carefully calculated psychology terrorization or else a completely miscalculated attempt to draw their interest which has, instead, only resulted in fear and trembling.

“It was probably a raccoon,” Suga says abruptly.

Oikawa looks at him. Suga's eyes are wide, staring into the middle distance.

“It couldn’t have been human,” Suga says. He must be talking about the skeleton in the attic.

“It was human,” Oikawa says. He knows what he saw. And, really, at this point, why would they disbelieve him? He’s been proven right about the aliens. They should really trust him more.

“It couldn’t have been,” Suga says, shaking his head. He takes a large gulp of his coffee. He shakes his head again. “It couldn’t have been,” he repeats.

“It was,” Oikawa says.

“That’s insane,” Suga says. He turns his head to meet Oikawa's eyes. Suga’s eyes are red-rimmed and underlined with dark shadows. Oikawa probably doesn’t look much better.

“We live in insane times, Kou-chan,” Oikawa says sagely. “The rules of life as we knew it no longer apply. The aliens have come. We have to adapt to a new paradigm.”

“There are no aliens,” Akaashi says. His voice sounds hollow, as if even he doesn’t believe his own argument anymore. Or maybe Oikawa just doesn’t care what he thinks anymore – he’s too tired and there’s too much to do. Oikawa is taking a rest right now, but he has more work to do. The cabin isn’t safe yet, and Oikawa wants to get it as alien-proof as he can before nightfall – that’s when they’ll strike.

“I really hope I don’t have to say ‘I told you so’ to your dead body, Kei-chan,” Oikawa says. “I’d much rather say it to your pretty, living face once we all get out of here alive, but, really, there aren’t any guarantees on that happening at this point.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t wearing a tinfoil hat right now, Tooru,” Akaashi says tiredly. “You have moved well beyond even that level of ridiculousness.”

“We do have tinfoil, don’t we?” Oikawa says. He had forgotten. That’s actually a very good idea. It may just be an urban legend, of course, but there’s no sense in skipping over things that might help just because they’re so popular with the uneducated masses.

“I was – never mind,” Akaashi says, sighing. “Nothing I say is going to change your mind about this now.”

“Do you want a hat, Kei-chan?” Oikawa asks him, standing up. Akaashi levels him with a thoroughly unamused look. Oikawa will take that as a no. “How about you, Ken-chan?” he asks Kenma.

Kenma does not open his eyes but he nods, ever so slightly, his head rubbing against Akaashi's shoulder. Akaashi sighs again.

“Two hats,” Oikawa says. “And for you, darling Kou-chan, brewer of coffee, gifted with the – well, actually, to be perfectly honest with you, you look kind of manic and terrifying right now.”

Suga makes a strangled noise and stares up at Oikawa from the couch. He is clutching his current cup of coffee – Oikawa really has no idea how many he’s had since last night – to his chest, but even his death grip on the cup isn’t hiding the way his hands are shaking.

“I’ll make one for you, too, Kou-chan,” Oikawa tells him gently. Maybe it will help calm him down.

Oikawa leaves them in the living room and walks into the kitchen, making a beeline for the cabinet that the tinfoil is in. They were going to use it to cook chicken on a fire. Their lives were so simple back then – all they had to worry about was a broken stove. Well, actually, Oikawa already knew about the lake monster, but he hadn’t quite resolved himself on the aliens yet and no one else believed him at that point, so, really, their lives only _seemed_ simpler, because the aliens were already watching them, clearly, coming for them, certainly, and it was just that no one but Oikawa had any idea yet that anything was even wrong.

How far they’ve come.

It’s tempting to pack up the car and just drive away, but Oikawa knows better than to think that the aliens will let them go now. If they try to leave, the aliens will just track them down, and it will be so much harder to defend themselves with only the car for protection.

No, they have to stay. This is a fight to the death now, and Oikawa intends to win it.

“Tooru,” Suga says, walking into the kitchen. He looks truly horrible, which is quite a feat for someone as stunning – under ordinary circumstances – as Suga.

“Yes, Kou-chan?” Oikawa says. He pulls open the cabinet, looking for the tinfoil. They only have the one roll, it looks like. Pity.

“Tooru, this is crazy,” Suga says.

“You said that before,” Oikawa tells him. He really hopes that whatever Suga has going on right now is just the result of too much caffeine, but it’s starting to get a bit worrying. Oikawa feels great – he feels so _fucking_ alive – he feels _fantastic_! Suga, though, looks ghastly. “Maybe you should sit down, Kou-chan,” Oikawa says. “You don’t look well.”

“Tooru,” Suga says. He shuffles forward until he is standing right in front of Oikawa. He’s swaying a little. “Tooru,” he says again, “we have to stop this.”

“That’s what I’m working on,” Oikawa says. Has Suga not been paying attention at all? Oikawa has spent hours now – he isn’t sure how many; time seems a bit weird right now, moving too slow and then too fast, second to second, but that’s probably just the coffee and the adrenaline – fortifying this cabin. Oikawa is doing everything in his power to stop this. Maybe Suga is finally ready to help. “If you want to help, you can check the basement for salt,” Oikawa says. “They might have some down there for when it snows.” Salt is really a ghost thing, Oikawa knows that, but it’s best to take all possible precautions.

“No, Tooru,” Suga says, shaking his head. He stumbles and Oikawa grabs his arms to steady him. “We have to go,” Suga says. “We have to leave. Being here is making us crazy.”

“We can’t leave, Kou-chan,” Oikawa says. “They won’t let us leave now. It’s safer in the cabin.”

“There aren’t any aliens, Oikawa,” Suga says, sounding a little stronger now that he’s getting angry. “There never were, because aliens don’t exist. They don’t exist, Tooru, they just don’t.” Suga waves one hand around the kitchen, his other hand clutching his coffee cup to his chest. “This is just a shitty cabin,” Suga says, “and, yeah, some weird things have happened since we’ve gotten here, but we’ve lost touch with reality. You have _Kenma_ believing in this nonsense now!”

“Kenma sees the truth,” Oikawa tells Suga primly. “Just because you and Kei-chan want to bury your heads in the sand –”

“You know he has anxiety issues,” Suga hisses, suddenly pitching forward to grab Oikawa's arm. “Do you really think that Kenma believes there’s an alien monster in the lake because logic tells him so?”

Oikawa feels a pang of guilt at that. He hasn’t been thinking about Kenma's anxiety at all. Oikawa is feeling pretty freaked out right now – not worried, really, but terrified, for sure – and if he feels like this then it must be worse for Kenma.

“You’re acting crazy, Tooru,” Suga says quietly, “and you’re dragging all of us into your crazy with you.”

For a moment, Oikawa says nothing. Suga is hanging off of his arm, swaying gently from side to side as he meets Oikawa's gaze with bloodshot but steady eyes. He looks terrible. He looks frantic and wild and completely exhausted. Oikawa wants to reassure him, but … well, he can’t.

The thing is, Oikawa would love for Suga to be right. He would love for all of this to be in his head, for all of it to be the product of the overactive imagination that every teacher he ever had in elementary school credited him with.

It isn’t, though.

Oikawa didn’t imagine the fingers in the lake.

Oikawa didn’t imagine the creepy shells on the dock and the message on the beach.

Oikawa didn’t imagine something calling Keiji’s name all night long in a desperate, terrifying howl.

Suga can say fish. He can say hikers. He can say prankster kids getting drunk and messing with them, calling the name they heard Kenma shouting when Akaashi fell off the drop-off.

It doesn’t change facts.

There is something in that lake, and it’s coming for them. It’s been watching them since they got here and it will probably strike tonight. If they aren’t prepared, they won’t survive.

“I’m just trying to keep us _safe_ ,” Oikawa says, matching Suga's low volume and gentle tone.

“We _are_ safe,” Suga says. He lets go of Oikawa's arm and moves his hand up to Oikawa's neck, pulling Oikawa down so he can press their foreheads together. It’s something Oikawa did the first week they knew each other, when Suga came down with something closer to the plague than the flu and had no one but his mostly-still-a-stranger roommate to look after him. It’s been their thing ever since.

Oikawa feels a lump forming in his throat. He blinks rapidly.

Suga is the best friend he has ever had. Oikawa loves all three of them more than anything in this world – or out of this world – but he met Suga first, and it’s always been Oikawa-and-Suga and Kenma-and-Akaashi a little bit, even as close as they all are. Oikawa trusts Suga with everything that he is. They’ve talked each other through more heartbreaks and family crises and just plain shitty nights than Oikawa can even remember, and if he didn’t love him like a brother Oikawa probably would have proposed or something years ago.

“Just trust me, Tooru,” Suga says. His eyes are closed as he holds their foreheads together, his grip on Oikawa's neck gentle but firm. “Trust me.”

“I do trust you, Koushi,” Oikawa says. He trusts Suga more than anyone else alive. But, in this, Suga is _wrong_.

“Then let this go,” Suga says. “Believe what you want, but stop talking about the aliens. Stop talking about the lake monster. Stop scaring Kenma – stop scaring _me_. We’ll stay in the cabin tonight, we won’t go near the lake again if that’s what you need, but please stop terrifying us all. Okay?”

“Okay,” Oikawa says. He can do that. Suga isn’t asking him to stop thinking about it, or to stop believing it himself, or even to stop taking precautions of his own. As long as Oikawa is free to do what he has to do to protect them, he’s willing be less vocal about it.

He really does feel bad about scaring Kenma, now that Suga has reminded him about Kenma's anxiety. He’ll have to make that right.

“Good,” Suga says, sighing deeply. His shoulders drop as he pulls back, his lips twitching up a bit in a small smile. Oikawa smiles back. “Now,” Suga says, “I think we all need to sleep. It’s daylight,” he says, cutting off Oikawa's protest before he can voice it, “so we should be fine to get a few hours now, and we’ll all feel much better once we do.”

“Sounds good,” Oikawa says. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep, but it’d be great if Suga did. Oikawa doesn’t need sleep. He’s feeling a little bit calmer now than he did before talking to Suga, but he’s still wired.

“Good,” Suga says again. He steps away from Oikawa, over to the sink, and dumps the rest of his coffee down the drain. “Now,” he says, turning back to Oikawa, “Let’s –”

The rushing, sucking, screeching, gurgling sound that the sink lets out as the coffee drains, shattering the warm, placid atmosphere with its deathly shriek, makes them both jump. Oikawa had forgotten about that.

They stare at each other, wide-eyed, for a moment, before they both start laughing.

Oikawa grabs Suga's arm and drags him into the living room, still giggling. Suga's face is going red from laughing so hard as he stumbles at Oikawa's side.

Akaashi and Kenma both look up at them, matching expressions of confusion on their faces. Kenma has his fingers twisted into the fabric of Akaashi's shirt, which reminds Oikawa of what Suga said and is sufficiently sobering to kill the laughter bubbling in his chest.

Calm once again, Oikawa pulls Suga to where Kenma and Akaashi are sitting on the couch and shoves him towards Akaashi's far side. Suga falls half on the couch and half on Akaashi's lap, still laughing breathlessly. He is clearly very, very tired. Oikawa drops onto the couch on Kenma's open side and immediately cuddles into him, wrapping an arm around Kenma's waist and pushing in until Kenma is tightly sandwiched between him and Akaashi.

“What’s the matter with the two of you?” Akaashi asks suspiciously. He tugs on Suga's arm until Suga gets situated leaning against Akaashi's side and finally quiets down with a contented sigh. Suga's eyelids begin to drop as soon as he rests his head on Akaashi's shoulder.

“Kou-chan thinks we need to take a nap,” Oikawa says. “And I second the motion.” He catches Akaashi's eye and tilts his head in a silent apology. Akaashi immediately rolls his eyes in forgiveness.

“Motion carried,” Akaashi says. He wiggles around a bit, jostling Suga on one side and Kenma – and, consequently, Oikawa – on the other as he makes himself comfortable.

“Sweet dreams, everyone,” Oikawa says. “Rest up – we’re making s’mores in the woodstove when we wake up.”

“No, we’re not,” Suga says, sounding mostly asleep already. “That’s a fire hazard.”

“We’ll see,” Oikawa says, quietly enough that he’s pretty sure Suga won’t hear him. If they can’t have a campfire down by the lake – and, obviously, they can’t – then they have to roast their s’mores some other way. Oikawa will make it work. He’s very good at improvising.

Once everyone has settled down, Oikawa shifts a bit to peek at Kenma. His eyes are closed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s asleep.

“Ken-chan,” Oikawa whispers.

“I’m sleeping,” Kenma murmurs.

“Okay,” Oikawa whispers, “I’m talking to you in a dream.”

Kenma's lips twitch. “And what are you saying in this dream?” he asks quietly.

“I just wanted to say that I think we’ll be fine here in the cabin now,” Oikawa tells him. Their heads are so close together that the hair falling across Kenma's face moves when Oikawa talks. Oikawa reaches up and brushes the hair away, tucking it behind Kenma's ear. “I don’t think anything is going to come up here to get us after all,” Oikawa continues, keeping his voice even and low. “As long as we stay away from the lake, we should be fine.”

“Is that all you wanted to say?” Kenma asks.

“Yes,” Oikawa says. “That’s all.”

“You’re an idiot,” Kenma says. “Go to sleep.”

“We already are asleep, Ken-chan,” Oikawa says. “This is a dream, remember?”

“Then keep your dreams down, would you? Some of us really are trying to get some sleep,” Akaashi says, also whispering but not bothering to keep his voice quite as soft as Oikawa's and Kenma's.

“It’s rude to eavesdrop on other peoples’ dreams, Kei-chan,” Oikawa says, lifting his head a bit to address Akaashi. Kenma reaches up and pulls Oikawa back down.

“Shh,” Kenma says. “No more talking. Not even in dreams. I’m tired.”

“Anything for you, Ken-chan,” Oikawa says.

He relaxes into the softness of the worn couch cushions and the warmth of Kenma beside him. He can feel Kenma's breathing even out as he drops off to sleep. Suga is making the small not-quite-snoring sounds that mean he’s completely out. Akaashi also seems to be asleep, all of the tension bled from his body as Suga and Kenma press against him on either side.

It’s a shame that Oikawa isn’t tired.

Oikawa smothers a yawn with the back of his hand. He blinks, but then his eyelids drag down and absolutely refuse to open again. He feels heavy and he is vaguely aware of everything fading out except the steady motion of Kenma's breathing beside him, and then even that feels distant.

Oh.

Maybe he is tired after all.

 

* * *

 

Tobio waits all day for them to come out to the lake, but they never do.

He doesn’t know what he did wrong.


	5. Day Five: The Campfire

Oikawa has resigned himself to the fact that he will outlive all of his friends – probably by a lot. He will outlive them, bury them in nice cemeteries with classy headstones, and spend the rest of his life mourning the fact that they all could have lived much longer, fuller, richer lives together if they had just _listened_ to him about the _fucking_ lake monster.

But, no, they are dead set on a campfire tonight. Suga has agreed to stay on the lawn of the cabin instead of going right down by the water’s edge, but this is of little consolation to Oikawa. As if the aliens are going to just leave them alone if they stay far enough away from the water. This has gone far beyond staying away from the water. This is war. And none of them are taking it seriously.

Yesterday, everyone was pretty freaked out, but they were at least thinking rationally enough to accept the gravity of the situation. Suga and Akaashi put up good fronts, but Oikawa knows they were giving the aliens and their pet lake monster some real thought yesterday, and Kenma was openly on board. Today, though, everyone is back to denying.

Suga is calling it “the clarity of being well-rested.”

Oikawa is calling it “stupidity and a collective death wish.”

Yesterday, everyone was at least engaged with what was going on, if not acknowledging what exactly that was. Today, it’s back to denial, denial, denial. How quickly they forget.

When they all woke up after their nap yesterday, it was early evening. They lit the candles and the woodstove – Oikawa had to throw himself between Akaashi and the windows to keep him from dismantling all of Oikawa and Kenma's hard work to fortify the cabin; Oikawa doesn’t know where Akaashi ended up getting the wood from, in the end, but the fortifications remain secure, so Oikawa isn’t too worried about it – and then they waited.

And they waited.

And they waited.

Finally, around 10 p.m., the screaming started up again. It lasted a little over an hour and then it stopped completely and did not start up again all night.

By 2 a.m., they were all asleep, once again huddled on the floor in front of the woodstove both for warmth and to avoid the bunkbeds of certain death.

They slept through the night and Oikawa woke up to a silence that can only mean one thing: the aliens are biding their time, waiting to lull them into a false sense of security and then strike. They need to be prepared to counter that attack.

No one else agrees with this assessment.

Suga has spent the day humming pleasantly and smiling at all of them. He drank two cups of coffee in the morning and then put the coffee maker away and pulled out a novel about something boring and period and romantic and has spent most of the rest of the day reading it, minus a break to fix lunch for everyone – with Kenma's assistance – while once again humming and smiling as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.

Akaashi has spent the day going back and forth between hideous puzzle books and a nonfiction book that is so reminiscent of the college classes they have only just barely put behind them that Oikawa shudders every time he sees it.

Kenma has spent the day, in turns: reading; napping while leaning heavily against Akaashi; cuddling with Akaashi while commenting on Akaashi's atrocious puzzle books; making pleasant and carefree conversation with Suga while they both drink coffee and fix lunch and generally act like a pair of suburban soccer parents enjoying a relaxing Sunday afternoon; and ignoring Oikawa like the traitor he is whenever Oikawa attempts to engage him in a meaningful discussion about their plans for the impending alien strike.

Once again, Oikawa is alone in a sea of willful ignorance, forced to shoulder the burden of responsibility for their safety all on his own.

“I can’t believe you’re actually doing this, Kou-chan,” Oikawa says, frowning at Suga.

Suga doesn’t even look over from where he is pulling the chicken from the freezer. “Nothing came for us last night, Tooru,” Suga says mildly, setting the chicken in the sink to thaw. “I think we’re fine.”

“We won’t be if you insist on this madness,” Oikawa says. “So the aliens didn’t strike last night – so what? So they’re waiting for us to do something like this: like going down by the lake and lighting a fire to tell them exactly where we are so they can come get us.”

“There are no aliens,” Suga says. His voice is infuriatingly serene.

“You weren’t so certain of that yesterday,” Oikawa says. Suga denied the aliens yesterday too, but Oikawa could tell that he was just covering for the unease he felt. He was _so close_ to acknowledging the truth, and now, just because they had a relatively quiet night, he’s back to insisting on prankster kids who have gotten bored and likely moved on to more interesting targets. Suga is beautiful, but he is a fool when it comes to the true nature of the universe.

“We were all very sleep-deprived and seriously freaked out yesterday,” Suga says. He surveys his assembled supplies, laid neatly out on the counter, waving his hand at each item as he checks everything off of his mental list. He is still not looking at Oikawa, keeping his attention on the can of baked beans and s’mores supplies instead of on the real problem at hand. “Not to mention over-caffeinated,” Suga adds, somewhat ruefully, as he nods in approval at his handiwork.

“The truth _is_ freaky,” Oikawa says. “You _should_ be scared. We should all be terrified. We should all be _preparing_.”

“We _are_ preparing,” Suga says. “You’re the only one who isn’t helping.”

“Tch.” Oikawa crosses his arms and lifts his chin, staring down his nose at Suga as best he can while he is sitting at the kitchen table and Suga is standing by the sink. “I’m a conscientious objector,” Oikawa says haughtily. “ _Someone_ has to be the voice of reason here.”

Finally, Suga looks over. He does not look pleased. “Tooru,” Suga says, “can’t you let this go? Everyone is finally relaxing again. We are finally having a nice time again. And you’re the one who was so set on having a campfire, anyway.”

“That was before I knew there were aliens here,” Oikawa says, patiently. “I’d love to have a campfire –” he uncrosses his arms so he can gesture expansively “– I’ll have all the campfires you like, Kou-chan, but not at this lake. This lake is no good. This lake is a death trap set by aliens and guarded by a monster. A campfire at this lake is basically suicide and I’m too young and pretty to die – we all are.”

“Well,” Suga says, “I’m having a campfire. If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.”

“And leave the three of you defenseless against the aliens?” Oikawa says. He scoffs, crossing his arms again. “I don’t think so. You may be idiots, but you’re my idiots, Kou-chan.”

“You say the sweetest things, Tooru,” Akaashi says, walking into the kitchen with Kenma on his heels. Oikawa blows him a kiss. Akaashi rolls his eyes, then turns to Suga. “I put the wood for the fire by the backdoor,” Akaashi says. He and Kenma both lean against the counter on the far side of the sink from Suga, close to the walkthrough to the living room. Oikawa angles his chair to face them as well as Suga.

“You didn’t uncover any of the windows, did you?” Oikawa asks, eyeing them. He doesn’t think that Kenma would betray him so viciously – Akaashi is holding so firmly to his denial that Oikawa wouldn’t put it past _him_ , but Kenma knows better – however, he is not completely certain. “We’ll need this place for cover once your stupid fire lures the aliens out, Kei-chan,” Oikawa says.

“We didn’t mess with your ridiculous fortifications,” Akaashi says, his tone absurdly longsuffering. Oikawa is the one who has a lot to deal with right now; Akaashi has no right to take that tone. Akaashi looks at Suga again. “We took apart the bunkbeds,” he says.

Ah. Well, that’s fine. That explains the noise, too. Oikawa just thought they were … actually, he didn’t really wonder what all of that noise was – he was too busy trying to convince Suga to have his back on the yes-aliens-no-campfire thing – but that does explain it. And Oikawa should have thought of the bunkbeds, actually, for extra wood for the fortifications. Maybe there’s some left.

“Both of them?” Suga asks. He sounds horrified. If only Oikawa could draw that kind of reaction out of him about the things that truly matter – like them not getting abducted by human-hating aliens and fed to a lake monster that has a taste for human flesh.

“Yeah,” Akaashi says.

Suga's eyes go wide and then he drops his head into his hands, digging his fingers into his hair. “We’ll never get our deposit back,” he says quietly, the words slightly muffled by his palms but the edge of distress filtering through just fine.

“We are way past that,” Akaashi says, “thanks to Tooru’s interior design work yesterday.”

“Ken-chan helped,” Oikawa points out. He shoots a hurt and betrayed look at Kenma, hoping that the reminder of his recent about-face will trigger some kind of guilt and regret for his refusal to help Oikawa today, but Kenma just stares back at him without the slightest hint of remorse.

“I was really, really tired,” Kenma says.

“If that’s how you want to play it, Ken-chan,” Oikawa says, shrugging. “But I know you know the truth. You believe. I can see it in your eyes.”

Kenma looks away, hiding his eyes behind the fall of his hair. Oikawa feels a surge of satisfaction. He knew Kenma hadn’t changed his mind. Kenma is probably just going along with Akaashi, as he so often does. When push comes to shove, though, Oikawa is fairly certain that Kenma will step up to the task at hand and join Oikawa in battling these aliens. Oikawa just hopes it isn’t already too late when that happens.

“It’ll be dark in about an hour,” Akaashi says, glancing at the window above the sink. He can’t see out of it, of course, because Oikawa and Kenma covered it yesterday. Akaashi's lips press into a thin line for a moment, and then smooth out into neutrality again. “We can play cards or something until then,” he says, his tone bland with obvious effort. Poor Akaashi – so determined to be blind and frustrated instead of enlightened and helpful.

“Good,” Suga mumbles. He lifts his head from his hands and looks around at the three of them. “Let’s play a nice game of cards,” he says. “And then we’ll have a nice campfire cookout, and then we’ll have a nice final few days here.”

“It’ll be nice,” Kenma says, nodding.

“It’ll be very nice,” Oikawa agrees pleasantly. “A wonderful final night of comradery and friendship, followed by a lovely last supper down by the lake. It will be wonderful.”

“And if the aliens do get us –” Suga says. Oikawa perks up, though he’s pretty sure Suga still isn’t actually taking this seriously. “– at least the chicken won’t have gone to waste,” Suga finishes.

“Heaven forbid,” Akaashi says, deadpan.

“Yes, heaven forbid,” Oikawa says. “Heaven forbid we die before we eat the stupid fucking chicken, right?”

“Right,” Suga says. He pushes away from the counter, standing up straight. “So,” he says, “what card game am I going to kick your asses at?”

Akaashi and Suga go back and forth with smack talk as they walk into the living room. Oikawa sighs heavily, watching them go. Kenma lingers against the counter, also watching them go. When Kenma and Oikawa are alone in the kitchen, Kenma drops his gaze to the floor.

“Suga needs us to have a good time tonight,” Kenma says quietly, keeping his voice low enough that Suga and Akaashi can’t hear him from the next room. Oikawa stares at Kenma, wondering where this is going. “So we should keep quiet about the aliens,” Kenma continues. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be paying attention – just the two of us.”

Oikawa stares at Kenma for a moment before exactly what Kenma is saying – and what that means – sinks in; once it does, Oikawa gasps. “Ken-chan,” he coos, forcing his voice down – so that Suga and Akaashi don’t hear him – instead of shouting in glee and pumping his fist into the air like he wants to. Kenma _does_ believe. Oikawa’s heart feels so full.

Kenma looks up, meeting Oikawa's gaze with an expression of calm determination on his gorgeous face. “I have your back, Tooru,” Kenma says. “And, together, we’ll have theirs.”

“Yes, we will, Ken-chan,” Oikawa says. He springs out of his chair and bounds across the kitchen to wrap his arms around Kenma's neck and shoulders, pulling Kenma tightly against him. He is grinning widely. “Yes we will!” Oikawa says again. He laughs, spinning them both around in a circle in the middle of the kitchen.

Kenma allows this, but then pushes away from Oikawa enough to nod towards the living room. “We should go,” he says. “They’ll wonder what we’re doing.”

“Can’t have that,” Oikawa says cheerfully. “Kei-chan would probably skin me alive.”

Kenma gives Oikawa a strange look at that, but he doesn’t ask for clarification. Oikawa doesn’t offer any. He keeps one arm around Kenma's shoulders as they walk into the living room together. Oikawa can’t stop smiling. Fortunately, Suga seems to take Oikawa’s enthusiasm for Texas hold ‘em at face value – or, more likely, he would rather live in denial than question it. Akaashi looks at Oikawa with suspicion but then is distracted by Kenma sitting down next to him.

Oikawa throws himself into the game with gusto. It is much easier to relax now that he knows Kenma will be watching for the aliens, too.

Once Akaashi has shuffled and dealt the deck – using some fancy card-handling skills that make Kenma nod appreciatively, which makes Akaashi smile charmingly, which makes Oikawa and Suga roll their eyes at each other – Oikawa catches Kenma's eye. Kenma tilts his head ever so slightly in acknowledgement. Oikawa beams at him.

Maybe they won’t die tonight after all. Maybe, between the two of them, Oikawa and Kenma can keep their narrow-minded friends alive and safe for another day. Maybe – Oikawa decides, magnanimously – he’ll even let Suga win a few hands of cards in a show of gracious forgiveness for Suga's adamant refusal to be of any assistance whatsoever in Oikawa's attempts to protect them all from the looming threat of death and alien experimentation.

Then again, maybe he won’t.

Suga is insufferable when he wins.

 

* * *

 

Kenma wins every hand of Texas hold ‘em, as always.

Oikawa forgot about what a card shark he is.

Akaashi is insufferable about it, as always.

It’s almost worth it for the way Kenma smiles when Akaashi compliments him after every game.

Almost.

Oikawa will trounce them next time.

 

* * *

 

Suga refuses to allow anyone else to assist in the building of the campfire. Apparently, four nights of building fires in the woodstove has made him an expert or something and playing with the lighter somehow makes Oikawa “irresponsible” and “untrustworthy around an open flame.” But, whatever – it isn’t as though Oikawa doesn’t have enough to do already. Someone has to watch the lake, after all.

When evening falls dark around them, keeping his focus becomes more difficult – the stars here are absolutely incredible. There are so many of them, and they are so clear in the pitch black blanket of the night sky. Oikawa has never seen stars like this before in his life. He has to keep reminding himself to look away so that he can check the lake and the woods around them for signs of suspicious activity.

As the night wears on, though, marked with conversation and reminiscing and round after round of s’mores until not even Oikawa feels tempted by another one, Oikawa finds himself relaxing somewhat.

“This is why people come out here,” Suga says contentedly, also staring up at the stars. The light from the fire is playing across his face in a way that is gentle and dangerous at once.

Suga is lying back in one of the lawn chairs that Oikawa and Kenma found in the overgrown carport when they were looking for a ladder and which Kenma and Akaashi dragged out onto the lawn and wiped down this afternoon in preparation for tonight. There are only three chairs that aren’t so badly damaged that sitting in them would be equivalent to asking politely for a trip to the hospital, so Akaashi and Kenma are sharing one. This arrangement seems to please both Kenma and Akaashi greatly, if the way they are – and have been all evening – wrapped around each other and smiling serenely is any indication. Oikawa is a little concerned that Kenma isn’t paying enough attention to their alien watch, but Kenma is sitting in the chair that is facing the lake, so he may well be watching the water as he stares forward with a seemingly unfocused gaze – Oikawa is choosing to believe that he’s being vigilant. Not that Oikawa has much room to talk; he’s keeping an eye out, but, at this point, it really is only the one eye he has dedicated to the task.

So far, there has been no sign of alien or lake monster activity. Oikawa is feeling pretty good about the evening, all things considered, but there is still plenty of time for the aliens to make a move – it’s only very nearly midnight now.

Akaashi hums in reply to Suga's comment. His eyes are closed. He draped a blanket from the cabin over himself and Kenma about an hour ago when Kenma started shivering – it is fairly cold, even with the fire – and the two of them look very cozy together.

“We should have been doing this all along,” Suga says. He drops his gaze from the stars to the fire. Oikawa watches him and the way the fire reflects in his eyes in the dark. Suga sighs. “It would have been nice to do this more than once,” he says quietly.

“Who says we can’t do this again?” Akaashi says, also quietly. He keeps his eyes closed but he tips his head towards Suga. Kenma, leaning against Akaashi with his head on his chest, also turns towards Suga, his eyes half-lidded.

“Come on, Keiji,” Suga says. “We all know we aren’t going to be like this once we go home. This is a nice vacation, but the real world is waiting for us once we leave here.”

“What do you mean, ‘like this’?” Kenma asks before Oikawa can.

Akaashi opens his eyes and looks at Suga. All three of them are watching Suga, who laughs.

“Like we are,” Suga says. He shrugs, feigning casualness. “We’ve all been joined at the hip for four years now, but it won’t be like that anymore – _we_ won’t be like that anymore.”

“Says who?” Oikawa asks, feeling indignant, at the same time that Akaashi says, “Why not?”

Suga laughs again, shifting in his seat. “Really?” he says. “None of you had thought about how things are going to change? It’s like I said our first night here – we don’t know where we’ll end up once we all start getting jobs and living lives outside of college dorm rooms and each other. We say we’ll see each other all the time, but we really don’t know that, do we? We don’t know what will happen.” Suga pauses when his voice catches. He swallows before continuing. “You’ve been my only family since I met you,” he says, speaking quietly, “and I love you all so much, but that doesn’t mean that we’ll stay close when we aren’t being forced together by circumstances. Being family doesn’t mean that people won’t leave you.” He sounds very small as he says the last part, his voice rough with emotion.

Oikawa gets up and walks quickly around the campfire, ignoring Suga's slightly choked warning to not catch himself on fire, and drops onto Suga's lawn chair with him. He wraps his arms around Suga and presses close.

“Kou-chan,” Oikawa murmurs.

“You’re crushing me, Tooru,” Suga says.

Oikawa shifts to the side, trying to give them both room to maneuver as they attempt to find a way to fit comfortably on one chair. Akaashi and Kenma make this look easy. Oikawa doesn’t let up on his grip on Suga as they fidget, and, once they are settled, Suga hugs Oikawa back. Oikawa presses a kiss into Suga's hair.

“We aren’t going to leave you, Kou-chan,” Oikawa says reassuringly. “Not ever.”

“I know you think that,” Suga says, speaking mostly into Oikawa's sweatshirt, “but you just don’t know what will happen next.”

“I know that it takes work to love someone,” Kenma says, drawing everyone’s attention. He is looking at Oikawa and Suga and gripping Akaashi's hand. “And I love all of you,” Kenma says. “I’m willing to work at it to stay with you. I don’t want to just let things happen – I want to make sure that we stay together.”

“Me too,” Oikawa says, nodding. “We don’t have to let ourselves drift apart, Kou-chan. We can decide where we want to end up.”

“Your old family is a bunch of dicks,” Akaashi says somberly. “But your new family isn’t, and we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

“We’re _never_ going anywhere,” Oikawa corrects him. He kisses Suga's head again.

“You want to keep living together when we all get married and have kids?” Akaashi says wryly. “Because that could get a little …”

“Horrifying,” Kenma finishes for him. “You know Tooru is going to be insufferable when he finally settles down.”

“I will be _adorable_ when I finally settle down,” Oikawa shoots back. “And what do you mean ‘finally,’ Ken-chan?” he adds indignantly. “You make it sound like I’m some kind of Casanova.”

“Well, you’re hardly a monk,” Akaashi says.

“You’re one to talk!” Oikawa says.

Akaashi grins. Kenma does not. Oikawa clears his throat and looks down at Suga, who is, at least, smiling now, though Oikawa knows that this conversation isn’t the end of this for him. They will be having this conversation again later – probably multiple times – but that’s fine; Oikawa is willing to have this conversation as many times as it takes for Suga to understand that what the four of them have is for keeps.

“We aren’t leaving you,” Oikawa says again. He squeezes Suga tightly for a moment and then eases up. “Not _ever_. Staying together doesn’t have to mean living together and all that,” Oikawa says, shooting Akaashi and Kenma a look. “Eventually we’ll all have lives that need to be a bit separate, but even then we’ll hold onto each other, and, until then, I intend to keep you all as close as possible.”

“Seconded,” Akaashi says.

“Me too,” Kenma says.

“Motion carried,” Suga says. He still sounds a little rough, but he’s smiling. Oikawa goes to kiss his head for a third time, but in the corner of his eye he sees Kenma stiffen.

“Ken-chan?” Oikawa asks. Kenma's eyes have gone wide; his mouth falls open.

Then, Akaashi screams.

 

* * *

 

Tobio has been watching them since the sun went down. They built a campfire, which Tobio enjoys greatly, and they have used it to do something to their food before they eat it, but mostly they have just been sitting around. If they are talking, they’re doing it too quietly for Tobio to hear them from beneath the dock.

He likes watching them sit around the campfire. There is something pleasant about it – the way they look at each other, the way they occasionally laugh loudly all at once, the way they fall into long stretches of silence sometimes but none of them get up and leave.

They look like they care about each other a lot.

Tobio wants that. The longer he watches them, the more he wants to be part of whatever it is that they have. He has never had anyone like that. Tobio has never had anyone at all. When he watches the dudes who usually come to the lake, he has never felt like this – this pain in his chest that makes him want to go right up to them and join in on one of those loud bursts of laughter – and he doesn’t know what’s different. Maybe it’s that he doesn’t feel afraid of them. He’s always been a bit afraid when watching the dudes around their campfires and the way they laugh and run around and throw their beer cans into the water when they are done. Tobio has been curious, but he has never wanted to be part of that.

He wants to be part of this, though.

The moon is very high when he makes his decision. He will go up to them. He has tried leaving shells and messages. He has tried mimicking the way they call to each other. He has tried everything he knows to try except for actually going up to them and saying something.

It is time to be brave.

If he wants this, he has to be willing to take a risk for it.

It is time to say hello.


	6. Day Six: War

Of course it happens just after midnight.

Oikawa laughs, fully aware that he sounds hysterical – he _feels_ hysterical – as they all run for the cabin. Oikawa is dragging Suga along by the hand. Akaashi and Kenma are clinging to each other, their proximity causing them both to stumble, as they dash towards the cabin and the relative safety it provides.

The cabin cannot keep the aliens out, but at least there isn’t a lake monster in there.

Kenma crosses the threshold last, immediately spinning to slam the door shut and throw the lock. Then he backs away, still holding Akaashi's hand tightly, as they all stare at the door, waiting for the thing outside to try to follow them inside.

Oikawa is pretty sure he is on the verge of a heart attack.

“What _was_ that?” Akaashi gasps, still breathing hard from their frantic dash. He pulls Kenma tighter against him, wrapping his free arm around Kenma's shoulders and digging his fingers into Kenma's shirt while keeping a tight grip on Kenma's hand.

“An alien,” Oikawa says. He laughs again, staring around at the three of them with wide eyes and then looking back to the door. He is smiling, but he doesn’t mean to be. He can’t seem to stop, though. “It was an alien,” he repeats. “I told you – I told you, I told you, I _told_ –”

“It wasn’t an alien,” Suga snaps. He is also wide-eyed and shaking, frantic looking.

“Don’t tell me you still don’t believe me,” Oikawa says, staring at him. He is still holding Suga's hand and he uses that contact to pull Suga closer, stepping forward so that they are basically nose to nose. “Kou-chan,” Oikawa says, very seriously, “we just saw the alien with our own eyes. You can’t keep denying. Especially not now – it’s coming for us, Kou-chan; this is not the time to deny reality!” His voice increases in volume steadily as he speaks and he shouts the last part directly into Suga's face.

“I’m not denying what we saw,” Suga says, shaking his head rapidly. His eyes dart to the door and then back to Oikawa's face. “But it wasn’t an alien,” Suga says. He drops his voice to a whisper. “It was a _demon_.”

Oikawa gives this thought the consideration that it deserves – about half a second – and then frowns at Suga.

“You really will go to any lengths to deny the truth, won’t you, Kou-chan?” Oikawa says, returning to a more normal volume. “Even when you see an alien with your own eyes, you can’t admit to it.”

“That thing wasn’t an alien,” Suga hisses. “It was _evil_.”

“Clearly, these aliens _are_ evil!” Oikawa says, raising his voice again. “They’ve been trying to kill us for days!”

“I don’t care what it was,” Akaashi says, interrupting Suga as he very obviously gears up to argue with Oikawa further. Oikawa and Suga both turn to look at him. Akaashi is staring at the closed cabin door. “I just know that I don’t want whatever it is to get in _here_ ,” he says.

That is certainly a sentiment that Oikawa can get behind.

“It’s a good thing someone fortified the cabin, then, isn’t it?” Oikawa says, just a little bit smugly. Okay, a lot smugly. He deserves some smugness, though – he has had to deal with a lot of shit from all three of them, to varying degrees, over the past few days and now here they are, potentially having their lives saved by the measures that Oikawa put in place. He deserves a moment of “I told you so.”

“I take back every negative thing I have ever said about your paranoia and obsession with aliens,” Akaashi says immediately. “Now tell us what we do next.”

This is incredibly gratifying. Akaashi is staring at Oikawa like Oikawa is the only one who can save them – and he probably is; no one else here has any knowledge whatsoever about aliens – and Kenma is staring at Oikawa as well, his expression a just about even blend of terror and trust. Suga is shaking his head, still stuck on the demon thing, probably, but Oikawa ignores him. This is his moment. He wants to enjoy it.

“Stop preening and start talking!” Akaashi says. He is clearly trying to glare, but there’s too much fear in his expression to pull it off. Oikawa takes it as the cue it is, though, and jumps into action.

“First things first,” Oikawa says, stepping back from Suga and dropping his hand so that he can head for the kitchen. Akaashi and Kenma follow him. Suga trails behind. Oikawa walks briskly, purposefully, across the kitchen, stopping in front of the appropriate cabinet. He opens the cabinet and pulls out what they need. Then he turns back to the three of them, holding the tinfoil aloft. “Before we do anything else,” Oikawa informs them, meeting Akaashi's eyes, “we need hats.”

It says something profound about exactly how screwed they are that Akaashi nods in acquiescence instead of rolling his eyes or putting up a fight.

Once again, Oikawa feels immensely gratified.

But, mostly, he feels afraid.

And high on adrenaline. If it’s war the aliens want, then they’ll get a war.

Oikawa Tooru isn’t going down without a fight.

 

* * *

 

Once the hats are made – again, tinfoil as a defense against alien mind probes may be an urban legend, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good idea to take precautions – and the rest of the remains of the bunkbeds have been used to barricade both the front and back doors and they have armed themselves as best they can, all that is left to do is wait.

Oikawa swings his club back and forth as he paces the length of the living room. The club is really just a bit of bedpost that he has hammered some nails halfway into, but it should do nicely if any aliens get within swinging range. It’s better than Akaashi's little switchblade pocketknife, anyway, which he apparently just had in his bag like some kind of lunatic. Who brings a switchblade on a camping trip? Oikawa has known Akaashi for four years and, apparently, there are still terrifying things that Oikawa has yet to learn about his darling, charming, not-so-innocent Kei-chan.

Kenma has also opted for a weapon made of what was formerly bunkbeds, but he hasn’t added any nails to his and has selected a much longer bit of wood. Akaashi spent about ten minutes sharpening the end of it into a point with his knife so that Kenma can use it to stab the aliens, which is, in the first place, ridiculous because Oikawa cannot imagine anyone less likely to stab anything than Kenma is, and, in the second place, only reinforcing Oikawa's growing suspicion that Akaashi has some kind of dark and twisted past that he has neglected to tell them about which almost certainly involves shanking people in alleyways and graffiti-ing gang signs onto public property.

Suga has lined all of the dishes from the kitchen along the coffee table in neat rows, ready and waiting to become projectiles should the cabin’s defenses be breached.

It is now one a.m. and there has been no sign of the aliens attempting to enter the cabin. They are biding their time.

“Aren’t crucifixes supposed to scare off demons?” Suga says, fidgeting with his coffee cups.

“That’s vampires,” Akaashi says. He and Kenma are huddled on the couch together, both clutching their weapons in one hand and each other with their free hands. Oikawa tried to tell them that a position like that will slow them down when the aliens get in – when every second is going to count – but they refuse to move.

“Oh,” Suga says. “Are you sure?”

“It isn’t a demon, anyway,” Oikawa tells him. “It’s aliens. And possibly a lake monster that does their bidding, but, really, at this point, I think the lake monster is the least of our worries.”

Oikawa has already indulged Suga by helping him pour the road salt they found in the basement in front of every possible entrance into the cabin. Suga's insistence that what they saw outside was a demon is at least better than when he was refusing to acknowledge that there was any threat at all, but it is distracting him from the task at hand. They need to focus on the aliens, not come up with new ways to ward off non-existent demons.

“We don’t know _what_ it was,” Suga says. “Not for sure. But if anything is a demon, that thing was.”

“You’re confusing the extraterrestrial with the paranormal, Kou-chan,” Oikawa tells him. “It’s an easy mistake to make when you don’t have any experience parsing these things, but I have more than enough experience to tell you – with a high degree of certainty – that what we saw outside was definitely not a demon.”

“What experience?” Akaashi says. “Reading conspiracy websites and watching _Alien_?”

“I have made a study of these things, Kei-chan,” Oikawa says. He stops his pacing to face Akaashi so that he can frown at him in disapproval. “And I don’t appreciate your tone.”

Akaashi looks like he is considering a reply, but he ultimately doesn’t say anything. When Akaashi turns his attention back to Kenma, Oikawa resumes his pacing, once again swinging his club in time with his steps back and forth across the room.

“The fire is going out,” Kenma says. Oikawa glances at him and then follows his gaze to the woodstove where the fire is, indeed, burning pretty low. They don’t need the fire for light – they have about three dozen candles lit for that purpose – but if the fire goes out it will get cold in the cabin fairly quickly, as previous nights have taught them.

“We used all of the wood to fortify the cabin,” Akaashi says.

“Well, we can’t take any of it down,” Oikawa says. “If we had any more I would say to use that for the defenses, too. We can’t afford to remove any of it.”

“We’ll have to burn something else,” Suga says. He looks around the room. His expression brightens as he looks at the wall between the woodstove and the now-barricaded back wall of windows. Suga gets up and goes over to the wall. Oikawa, Akaashi, and Kenma watch him. The wallpaper is peeling and Suga reaches out and grabs the loose edge of the paper, pulling on it. The paper comes away from the wall easily in one long strip, revealing a patchwork of newspaper beneath it.

“Did they use newspaper as insulation?” Akaashi asks, sounding stunned.

“That would explain why it’s so cold in here,” Kenma says.

“I cannot believe we paid money to stay here,” Akaashi says. He reaches up to run his hand through his hair but stops at the last second when he remembers that he’s holding a knife in that hand. He lowers his hand back to his lap with a sigh.

Suga continues peeling the wallpaper away, tossing the bits that come off onto the floor behind him. “We can burn this,” he says, tearing away a particularly large strip of paper. “We can’t use it on the doors and windows anyway.”

“You are a beautiful, brilliant man, Kou-chan,” Oikawa says. He turns and walks to the wall opposite where Suga is working. The wallpaper is peeling over here, too, and it is easy to begin tearing it away.

“So I guess you aren’t worried about the deposit anymore, Koushi,” Akaashi says.

“Fuck the deposit,” Suga says. “We’ll be lucky to get out of here alive.”

“That’s the spirit!” Oikawa says, grinning at Suga over his shoulder. “We have to commit to nothing but survival if we expect to come through this. There’s no room for anything but pure practicality.”

“Koushi?” Kenma says, sounding a bit worried.

Oikawa half-turns to look over at Suga. Suga is not moving; he is frozen with one hand in the air, still clutching the swath of wallpaper that he obviously just tore off of the wall.

“Kou-chan?” Oikawa says, turning to fully face Suga when Suga doesn’t respond to Kenma.

“I told you it was demons,” Suga whispers, still staring at the wall.

“It isn’t demons,” Oikawa shoots back reflexively. He releases the bit of wallpaper he was about to pull and walks over to Suga, though, to see what Suga is talking about.

Suga is staring not at the wall but at the front-page article of one of the newspapers that are lining the wall where Suga has already removed the wallpaper. Oikawa looks at the newspaper as well and immediately understands.

“Oh,” Oikawa says.

“What?” Akaashi says, tersely.

“Well,” Oikawa says, “it would have been silly to think that we were the aliens’ first victims. Obviously this is a trap they’ve sprung before. Of course there were others – the skeleton in the attic, for one thing, told us that.”

“What are you talking about, Tooru?” Akaashi asks. Oikawa hears him and Kenma both get up from the couch and come over to stand behind Oikawa and Suga.

Oikawa looks away from the first newspaper and begins scanning the others.

Drought.

Disappearances.

“Vandalism” in the woods.

Accidents on the lake.

More disappearances.

The newspapers are a catalogue of the aliens’ activity – the aliens must have a twisted sense of humor, using the evidence of their past crimes to line the walls of their death-trap cabin. If only their potential victims had seen what was hiding beneath the wallpaper, they might have known to run.

“What are you two looking at?” Akaashi asks, peering over Suga's shoulder.

“That,” Suga says, pointing to the headline that first caught his eye.

“‘Dead birds in park public health concern,’” Akaashi reads. “So what?”

“Read the article,” Suga says. His voice is a bit hollow sounding. “The first line.”

“‘The recent flood of dead birds has created a public health crisis in Hell,’” Akaashi reads. Suga nods at him to keep going, so Akaashi does. “‘Authorities do not know how or why these local birds are dying, but the sheer number of them has the Sanitation Department struggling to keep the park and city streets clean, while also raising concerns about the cause of these deaths and the possible impact the source may have on public health.’” Akaashi finishes and then looks from Suga to Oikawa. “So?” he asks. Oikawa can tell that he’s uneasy, though. Akaashi is intelligent enough to see that there is some kind of significance to this, especially given recent events.

“The aliens were clearly perfecting some kind of weapon,” Oikawa says. “They tested it on the birds to avoid a large-scale investigation that might have resulted in detection. Human bodies would have brought in the big guns – bird bodies only brought in the Sanitation Department. They are clearly very clever – not to mention well-versed in human protocols,” Oikawa adds, “to know to avoid detection like this.”

“This is demonic activity,” Suga says, shaking his head. “This is classic demonic activity.”

“Or there was some kind of bird virus,” Akaashi says. He doesn’t believe it, though – Oikawa can see it all over his face.

Oikawa points at one of the other headlines. “And this?” he demands. “Three deaths in a month on the lake, Kei-chan. And this –” he points at another headline “– they called it vandalism, but it’s basically crop circles in the forest. Or this –” Oikawa points at yet another headline “– more disappearances, Kei-chan. More victims of the aliens. People going missing in the woods and on the lake, Kei-chan. Is all of that a bird virus? Is it, Kei-chan?”

Akaashi frowns at the newspapers but doesn’t say anything. Kenma, standing behind him, is also frowning.

“All of this is proof that we are dealing with a demon,” Suga says. “Not aliens. Look at this –” Suga jabs his finger at an article reporting on a summer-long drought. “Demons mess with weather patterns; aliens don’t.”

“The fact that you’re saying that shows how little you know about aliens,” Oikawa says, scowling at Suga. “Aliens can mess with weather patterns,” Oikawa tells him. “Aliens can mess with all kinds of things – _these_ kinds of things. This is clearly, obviously, undoubtedly aliens.”

Kenma moves, then, and begins collecting the wallpaper that Suga stripped, releasing Akaashi's hand to do it. Akaashi turns his frown away from the newspapers and onto Kenma now, though his expression is suddenly less confusion and more concern. Kenma gathers most of the wallpaper scraps up, ignoring a few of the smallest bits, piles it all beside the woodstove, and feeds some of it into the fire. The paper burns much more quickly than the wood did. Kenma looks up at Oikawa, Akaashi, and Suga from where he is kneeling on the floor in front of the woodstove.

“Whatever is out there,” Kenma says calmly, “we need a plan, because sitting around in here and staring at the wallpaper isn’t solving anything.”

“Ken-chan is right,” Oikawa says. He catches Kenma's eyes and nods in approval. “We need a plan,” Oikawa says, addressing all three of them.

“We have a plan,” Akaashi says. “We’re working the plan right now. The plan is to stay in here and not get killed by whatever is out there.”

“That plan was fine before,” Suga says, once again letting his gaze wander across the newspapers on the wall, “but now we have new evidence.”

“You mean old newspapers you found in a wall?” Akaashi says, obviously trying to be skeptical but too on edge to really commit to it.

“This isn’t something we can wait out, Keiji,” Suga says, turning away from the wall. He looks from Akaashi to Kenma and then to Oikawa, meeting Oikawa's eyes solemnly. Oikawa holds his gaze. “The demons – or aliens,” Suga says, nodding at Oikawa; Oikawa nods back, willing to give Suga some leeway on this while he sees where this is going, “or whatever they are,” Suga continues, “are not going to let us go. We’re just another set of victims to them, and they are clearly invested in keeping their activities a secret. Now that we’ve seen whatever we saw out there, they won’t let us walk away from this unless we send a clear message.”

“What kind of message?” Akaashi asks.

Oikawa thinks he knows what Suga is thinking. He’s known Suga four years now – he knows how Suga thinks. Oikawa likes how Suga thinks.

“We have to kill the lake monster,” Oikawa says, answering Akaashi for Suga.

Suga nods. “We have to kill the lake monster,” he says. “Before it kills us.”

 

* * *

 

Preparing to kill an alien lake monster is a surprisingly simple process. Suga pulls two bottles of vodka from the so-called emergency bag and pours everyone a shot. Then he pours them each another shot. And then another. Kenma only sips at his first shot – he’s never been much on alcohol – but the rest of them work through theirs steadily – and rather quickly – as they pry off the wood they nailed over the backdoor and double-check their weapons.

They don’t call it liquid courage for nothing. By the time they’re ready to go out and face the monster, Oikawa is feeling much more confident about this whole thing.

There is a kayak in the carport that Oikawa is pretty sure should float, despite its obvious age, and he and Akaashi fetch it while Suga and Kenma watch their backs. Suga has carried an armload of coffee cups out with him and is brandishing one in his right hand, ready to start throwing at a moment’s notice.

They get the kayak down to the edge of the lake without catching sight of the lake monster or the aliens at all. Clouds have come out since they were out here for the campfire – which seems like a very long time ago now, not a matter of hours – and the moon is mostly obscured. The night is darker now than it was before. The lake is ominous as it reflects and refracts what little light there is, distorting reality around it.

Oikawa stumbles a little as he and Akaashi maneuver the kayak into position. He isn’t a lightweight, but he is certainly feeling those shots. Maybe he shouldn’t have drunk them so quickly. Also, maybe he should have eaten something first.

“So who’s going out?” Akaashi asks. He has his hands on his hips, his knife blade open and gleaming in the moonlight.

“I am,” Oikawa says. He has the most experience with aliens, and the most knowledge; it would be foolish for him to sit out on the mission to kill one.

“I want to go too,” Akaashi says.

“No,” Kenma says.

“I can watch Tooru’s back better than Koushi can,” Akaashi says, turning to Kenma.

“I think I should resent that,” Suga says, “but you’re probably right. You’re very scary with that knife of yours and I’m feeling a little drunk.”

“I told you not to do the third shot,” Kenma says, scowling. “Or the second.”

“Liquid courage, Ken-chan,” Oikawa tells him. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

“Fuck you,” Kenma says. “None of you should be going out on the lake right now – or ever. I still think we should get in the car and go.”

“The demon won’t let us leave,” Suga says, sounding mournful. “We have to fight, Kenma.”

“The aliens are out for human flesh now, Ken-chan,” Oikawa tells him, nodding in agreement with Suga.

“You’re going to get yourselves killed,” Kenma says. He sounds furious but he looks like he might start crying.

Akaashi suddenly reaches out and pulls Kenma closer. He puts his hands on either side of Kenma's face – displaying enough presence of mind to angle the switchblade away from Kenma as he does it – and stares into Kenma's eyes.

“Kenma,” Akaashi says, very seriously, “I swear to come back to you. I swear.” Then he leans forward and kisses Kenma's forehead.

Oikawa turns to Suga. “Kou-chan,” he says, solemnly, “I swear to come back to you, too.”

“Not until you kill the demon, Tooru,” Suga says.

“Show at least a little concern for my well-being, Kou-chan!” Oikawa says, aghast at Suga's flippancy. Oikawa might _die_ on this mission. He and Suga aren’t whatever Kenma and Akaashi are to each other – really, Oikawa doesn’t think that even Kenma and Akaashi know what they are to each other, though it’s pretty obvious what they want to be – but Suga _is_ Oikawa’s best friend. Oikawa deserves a little concern from his best friend.

“I’m very concerned,” Suga says. “But if you don’t kill the demon then we’re all dead anyway, so there’s no use in whining about it.”

“Fine, but give me a kiss anyway,” Oikawa says. “For luck.”

Suga steps forward and pulls Oikawa down so that he can kiss his forehead exactly like Akaashi did to Kenma.

“Happy?” Suga asks.

“Ecstatic,” Oikawa tells him.

Oikawa turns to Akaashi, who is still staring deeply into Kenma's eyes. It might be a trick of the light – or the lack of it – but Oikawa would bet real money that Kenma is blushing. It’s a shame to break up their little moment, especially since it looks like if Oikawa and Suga leave them alone for another minute or two they might finally do something about four years of building romantic attraction and sexual tension, but there _is_ a monster to kill.

“Kei-chan,” Oikawa says, waving his hand at Akaashi. Akaashi finally looks away from Kenma to blink at Oikawa. Oikawa gestures at the lake with his club. “We have a monster to kill,” Oikawa says. “Let’s go.”

“Right,” Akaashi says. He nods and steps away from Kenma, dropping his hands from Kenma's face. “We’ll be fine,” he says to Kenma.

“Yes, we will,” Oikawa says, grinning at Kenma and Suga both. “Or we’ll be dead, but if that happens you’ll probably both be dead too, so don’t worry about it.”

“That’s very comforting, Tooru,” Kenma says, deadpan.

“Try to stay alive,” Suga says, waving at Oikawa and Akaashi as they start towards the lake. “Try to not die,” Suga calls.

“You too, Kou-chan!” Oikawa calls back. Akaashi shushes him, but Oikawa ignores that. The aliens must be watching – they already know that Oikawa and Akaashi are coming for them. This is not a stealth operation.

This is a charge.

 

* * *

 

Tobio watches the dudes get into their boat with excitement. He almost gave up hope on them ever wanting to meet him, but here they are!

Two of the dudes stay on land while the other two paddle the boat out onto the lake. Tobio isn’t sure exactly how to go about this. Does he just swim over and introduce himself?

He tried just going up to them when they were having their campfire, but they all ran inside the cabin before he could get to them. It was really hard to pull himself out of the water, too; the drop-off is steep and Tobio’s tail is fantastic for swimming but it isn’t very effective for moving outside of the water. It took him a really long time to reach the campfire, and by then he was feeling itchy and uncomfortable because his skin was drying out. He waited for a while, but they didn’t come back outside so he got back into the lake.

Now, here they are, coming out to meet him!

Tobio is very excited.

He decides to swim over and wave. He sees dudes wave at each other all the time, and the response is usually for the other person to wave back and smile and then they start talking to each other. That would be excellent. That is exactly what Tobio wants. So Tobio swims over, sticks his head out of the water beside the boat, and waves.

Both of the dudes start screaming.

Then the boat tips over.

Tobio ducks under the water, watching as one of the dudes starts thrashing his way towards the shore. The other dude doesn’t move; he’s just floating there, under the water, not moving. Tobio swims closer and sees that the dude’s eyes are closed. It’s the same dude he touched a few days ago. Tobio waves his hand in front of the dude’s face, but the dude does not respond at all. Tobio frowns.

He can hear the other dudes shouting, but it’s muffled by the water. The dude in the water still doesn’t move.

Dudes are not supposed to stay under the water for too long – Tobio knows this. When dudes stay under the water for very long, they get still and everyone around them gets very upset. Tobio isn’t sure why dudes seem to have so much trouble with swimming, but he knows that this dude has been under the water for longer than he should be. He doesn’t want to touch the dude – the dude didn’t like it when Tobio touched him before – but he can’t leave the dude here. So Tobio wraps his arms around the dude and carries him to the surface.

The dude does not start moving or open his eyes when they are above the surface. He stays still. His eyes stay closed.

On the shore, the other dudes are still shouting. The dude who was on the boat with this one is on the shore now too, and he is shouting with the other two. Maybe they will know what to do – dudes usually seem to know what to do when one of them goes still from being in the water too long.

Tobio swims towards the shore, carrying the dude. He makes certain to keep the dude’s head above the water while he swims, even though it’s harder to move that way. The dude is pretty heavy.

The shouting gets louder as Tobio gets closer to shore, and not just because he is closer to it. Tobio doesn’t know what they are shouting because he has to focus to lift the dude over the drop-off. The dude really is pretty heavy, and hefting him up is difficult.

“Get off of him!” one of the dudes shouts, running towards Tobio. Tobio looks up. The dude looks angry, and as soon as he is close to Tobio he throws himself forward, landing on top of Tobio and the dude in his arms, and starts hitting Tobio.

Tobio lets go right away and moves back, getting away from the angry dude. The angry dude grabs the still dude and then the other two dudes reach them as well and all three of them pull the still dude onto the shore. One of them starts doing the thing that Tobio has seen dudes do before when one of them goes still like this. Tobio is glad that they know how to do that. He is also glad that the still dude starts coughing and trying to sit up very quickly once the other dude starts pressing on his chest.

“Tooru,” one of them says. “What the hell.”

“What happened?” the dude who was still – the one the other dude just called Tooru – says. He coughs some more.

“The lake monster almost got you,” one of the dudes says. “I swam for shore – I didn’t know you weren’t with me. I’m so sorry, Tooru.”

“We have to get away from the water,” one of the others says. He starts pulling the one he called Tooru up, grabbing onto him to help him stand. The other two also start moving away from the water.

Tobio doesn’t want them to run away again – at least not before he introduces himself. He has missed his chance to talk to them before because he was too afraid, and he won’t do it again. It’s time to be brave. This time, they can’t fall in the lake if he startles them. He just has to be brave.

Tobio takes a deep breath, swishes his tail a few times, and then he lifts himself out of the water as much as he can.

“Hello!” he says, trying to say things that he has heard dudes say to each other. The dudes all turn to look at him. Tobio grins and raises his voice – he wants to make certain they hear him – as he calls, “How are you?”


	7. Day Seven: The Lake Monster Is Adorable

Oikawa has a son. If he had been asked yesterday if he had any interest in adopting the so-called lake monster of Hell Lake, he would have laughed. He would have laughed loudly. He probably would not have stopped laughing for several minutes, and then, after he caught his breath, he would have laughed some more.

And yet, here he is. He has a son, and that son is named Tobio, and Tobio is a mermaid. Or, well, merman. Semantics. The important thing is that Tobio is _adorable_ and not even a little bit alien or dangerous or terrifying.

Tobio is sitting in the shallows at the edge of the lake, talking and laughing with Kenma and Akaashi while Oikawa and Suga carry drinks out for everyone. The afternoon is warm and just cloudy enough to not be overly bright. The lake is shimmering in the background. Everything is peaceful and lovely.

“I can’t believe we ever thought he was an alien monster,” Oikawa says, shaking his head.

It would be difficult to imagine anything less frightening than Tobio is as he stares at Akaashi with rapt attention and gently flicks his long blue tail in the water, splashing Kenma and Akaashi every time he laughs and his tail swishes. Even Kenma doesn’t seem to mind getting a bit wet; he blocks the splash as best he can with his arms, but he smiles at Tobio every time it happens instead of scowling. Tobio just has that effect on people, it seems. Maybe it’s a mermaid thing. Merman thing. Whatever.

“ _You_ thought he was an alien monster,” Suga says. “You dragged the rest of us into your conspiracy madness with you.”

“That’s right, Kou-chan,” Oikawa says pleasantly, “ _you_ thought he was a demon.”

“We all made mistakes,” Suga says stiffly. “There’s no reason to dwell on them.”

“Tooru! Koushi!” Tobio shouts as soon as he spots Oikawa and Suga. He bolts upright and waves at them, splashing Akaashi and Kenma a bit – not that either of them seem to care. Tobio’s smile gets even wider, somehow, as he watches Oikawa and Suga come closer.

“Tobio-chan!” Oikawa calls back, grinning at him. “What nonsense have Kei-chan and Ken-chan been filling your head with while I was away?”

“They told me about college,” Tobio says eagerly. “It sounds amazing.”

“I told him it was a hell pit,” Akaashi says mildly.

“It sounds _amazing_ ,” Tobio says again. “And Kenma said he’ll let me use his iPod after he charges it! It won’t work underwater, though,” he adds solemnly.

“No, electronics don’t tend to be very effective underwater,” Oikawa agrees.

“Neither are humans, though, so I guess that makes sense,” Tobio says, nodding. Akaashi laughs. Tobio beams at him.

“So, Tobio, have you ever tried lemonade?” Suga asks, holding out a glass for Oikawa to fill from the pitcher. Tobio shakes his head, watching with clear interest as Oikawa fills the glass and then as Suga passes it along to Akaashi.

Akaashi passes the glass to Tobio. Tobio takes the glass and stares down into it in fascination for a second, then promptly upends it and begins examining the bottom of the glass. Suga stops and stares at him. All four of them stare at him. After a moment, Tobio notices that they are staring and looks up, then around at the four of them.

“What’s wrong?” Tobio asks.

“You’re supposed to drink the stuff inside the glass,” Suga says. “Not dump it out.”

“Oh,” Tobio says. “It looked bad, though. I think something got into it. The color was bad.”

“It’s lemonade,” Oikawa says. “It’s supposed to look like that.”

“Oh,” Tobio says again. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Suga says, smiling at Tobio. He holds out his hand, gesturing for Tobio's glass. “Here,” Suga says, “we can refill it. Tooru?”

Oikawa takes the glass back from Tobio and refills it, then hands it to Tobio again. This time, Tobio holds the glass up to his nose and sniffs it.

“Are you sure it’s okay to drink it?” Tobio asks hesitantly. “It doesn’t smell right.”

“It doesn’t smell like water,” Suga corrects him. “It smells perfectly normal for lemonade.”

Tobio is clearly still skeptical, but he lifts the glass to his mouth and takes a sip. His eyes go wide.

“That’s so weird!” Tobio exclaims, staring down at the glass of lemonade with a shocked expression. “I’ve never tasted anything like that before!”

“I guess there isn’t much citrus growing around here,” Oikawa says, smiling indulgently as Tobio takes another, much larger, swallow of lemonade.

“I like it,” Tobio declares. He licks his lips. “It’s good.”

Tobio has declared just about everything that they have shown him to be good, from the fire Suga built last night to Akaashi's tee shirt, which Tobio was completely fascinated by yesterday and spent so much time staring at that Akaashi eventually took it off and handed it to him. Tobio did not put the shirt on; instead, he twisted, pulled, and stroked the fabric for a solid two hours before he finally seemed satisfied with his examination of it and gave it back – much wetter than before – to Akaashi.

The only thing that Tobio does not seem completely enthralled by is their swimming. After they all spent some time in the water together yesterday – even Kenma, to Oikawa's pleasure and surprise – Tobio told them baldly that they all look utterly ridiculous when they swim and he doesn’t know why they thrash around the way they do. Oikawa would be offended, but, after seeing Tobio swim, calling his own swimming inelegant and even ridiculous in comparison almost seems like a compliment.

“You can have as much as you like,” Suga says. “We can always make more.”

“Wait until you try chocolate milk,” Oikawa tells Tobio. “It’ll blow your mind.”

“Is it like this?” Tobio asks, then downs the rest of what was in his glass. “Because I like this,” he says, licking his lips again. “I like lemonade.”

“It’s even better,” Oikawa promises him. He is going to have so much fun with this kid. He can’t wait to introduce him to pizza.

“Tobio,” Suga says, finally moving to pour lemonade for the rest of them, “you said you ended up in the lake after a storm, right?”

Tobio nods. “But the place I washed over is too high for me to get back up,” he says. “So I’m stuck.”

“And you’ve been all alone in here?” Suga asks. He hands a filled glass of lemonade to Kenma, who swaps it with Tobio's empty glass. Tobio grins at him.

“Yes,” Tobio says, looking back at Suga. “Well,” he says, “there are dudes – people –” he corrects himself “– at the lake sometimes, but I never talked to them.”

“And there are no other merpeople in the lake with you?” Suga says. Oikawa thinks he knows where this is going.

“No,” Tobio says, shaking his head. “Just me.”

“So,” Suga says, handing another glass of lemonade to Kenma, who keeps it this time and passes the empty glass he was holding to Suga. “What about your family?” Suga asks, gently, watching Tobio.

“I don’t have one,” Tobio says. He doesn’t sound at all bothered by this. He takes another gulp of lemonade. “I’m supposed to meet up with the other merpeople at the breeding grounds every spring, but I got stuck before I could get there.”

“Your parents just left you to find your own way there?” Akaashi asks. He takes the glass of lemonade that Suga passes him but keeps his eyes on Tobio, frowning.

“I’ve never met my parents,” Tobio says. “I hatched and I knew I was supposed to find them in the spring. But then I got stuck,” he says again, “so I’ve never met them.”

“So merpeople are like salmon,” Kenma says thoughtfully.

“Who named you, then?” Oikawa asks. “If you never met your parents?”

“I knew my name when I hatched,” Tobio says. He finishes off his second glass – or, third, technically, but the second one he’s actually drank – and then turns the glass over again, running his hands all over it. “These are so cool,” he says. “Can you put anything in them, or just lemonade?”

“Anything that’ll fit,” Oikawa says. He takes his own glass from Suga and then settles onto the sand at the edge of the lake. Suga pours a glass of lemonade for himself and then sits beside Oikawa.

“So you don’t really have a family,” Suga says, once again speaking very gently to Tobio. Oikawa definitely knows where this is going. He can’t say that he minds it.

From the look of them, Kenma and Akaashi know where Suga is going with this, too. Kenma nods – ever so slightly but approvingly – at Suga before flicking his eyes back to Tobio. Akaashi is looking from Suga to Tobio with a quietly thoughtful expression.

At this point, Oikawa and Suga are on the same page. After the whole … debacle … where they tried to kill Tobio and Tobio rescued Oikawa when he hit his head on the kayak and almost drowned and there was screaming and confusion and then Tobio asking them how they were as if they had run into each other in the grocery store instead of been engaged in battle, there was a long conversation. Once they had calmed down, it actually took very little time to establish that there were no aliens or demons – it was all just Tobio, trying to get their attention indirectly because he was too shy to try to talk to them outright. They stayed up most of the night talking, then they went inside to nap, then they came back out around noon and continued talking, then they had another campfire – this one down by the water so that Tobio could participate – and then they went to bed in the cabin and got up this morning and have spent the entirety of this day, once again, with Tobio, mostly hanging out at the edge of the lake.

Oikawa has not felt this fond of someone this quickly since he met Suga on his first day of college. Even Kenma and Akaashi took longer than this to work their way into his good graces to a significant enough extent that Oikawa began considering them … well, important. Oikawa wants to protect Tobio and keep him safe. He wants to keep Tobio around.

“No,” Tobio says. Then he pauses in his examination of the empty lemonade glass and looks up at Suga abruptly. “Do _you_ have a family?” he asks, sounding as if he has only just considered this possibility.

“I do,” Suga says. He gestures at Oikawa, Akaashi, and Kenma, smiling at the three of them and then meeting Tobio's eyes again. “This is my family,” Suga says. “The four of us are a family.”

Tobio looks around at the four of them, clearly taking this information in. He nods slowly. “That’s good,” he says. “You care about each other a lot, right?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Oikawa says. He wraps an arm around Suga's shoulders and tugs him closer. The lemonade in Suga's glass sloshes and nearly spills, but Suga saves it; he shoots a glare at Oikawa, but it’s half-hearted. Oikawa grins at him. “We love each other a lot,” Oikawa says. He looks back at Tobio. “That’s what family is all about,” he tells him.

“That sounds nice,” Tobio says. “I’d like a family.” He looks thoughtful for a moment, watching Oikawa and Suga. His eyes trace the line of Oikawa's arm around Suga. Then he looks at Kenma and Akaashi, who are sitting so close together that their sides are pressed against each other. “How do you get one?” Tobio finally asks.

“You just have to decide to be a family to each other,” Kenma says. Tobio looks at him, and Kenma smiles. “It’s a decision, really,” Kenma says.

“Tobio,” Suga says, drawing Tobio's attention again. Suga hesitates. He glances at Oikawa – who nods encouragingly – and then at Kenma – who nods more subtly but without any uncertainty – and then at Akaashi – who pauses, but then nods as well. Suga looks back at Tobio, who has been watching the silent exchange with rapt attention. “Tobio,” Suga says again, “we’d like to make you part of our family. Would that be okay?”

Tobio nods so fast Oikawa is a little bit worried about his neck. “ _Yes_ ,” Tobio says very seriously. “Yes, I would like that. I like all of you a lot. I would like to be part of your family.”

“Good!” Oikawa says. “So that’s settled! Welcome to the family, Tobio-chan!”

“Thank you, Tooru,” Tobio says, still speaking very seriously.

“The only question now,” Suga says, grinning brightly, “is how to get you out of this lake.”

“You can get me out?” Tobio asks. His eyes widen as he stares at Suga.

“I’m sure we can,” Suga says. “Do you want to get out of the lake, Tobio?”

“Yes,” Tobio says, nodding rapidly again. “I don’t want to stay here. I want to go with you.”

“Where do we take him?” Akaashi asks. He looks from Suga to Tobio. “Is there anywhere in particular you want to go, Tobio?” he asks.

“I want to go with you,” Tobio says again.

“We could take you to the ocean,” Kenma says. He looks at Oikawa. “You’re always saying you want to go to California,” Kenma says.

“I’m sure we can find jobs in California,” Oikawa says.

He has always liked the idea of California – sun and surf and wide open ocean. He would be an outstanding surfer if he had the chance to learn. They can see the redwoods.

“Not necessarily,” Akaashi says. Oikawa shoots him a look. Akaashi shrugs elegantly. “It’s worth a try, though,” he says. “There isn’t anywhere else we want to go. Why not California?”

“Why not California?” Oikawa echoes him, though with much more enthusiasm. “Kou-chan?” he asks, turning to Suga.

“I guess we’re headed west,” Suga says, grinning.

Oikawa pumps his fist in the air, shouting in glee. Tobio immediately copies him, grinning hugely. Oikawa laughs.

“California,” Oikawa says, grinning around at the four of them, at his family, “here we come.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, there is more to this story. Part two, the road trip to California, will happen ... eventually.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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